May the Best Hair Win

Forget those useless polls and windbag prognosticators -- there's only one sure way to predict America's next president: The hair.

That's right: In every presidential race since the dawn of television, voters have consistently chosen the nominee with the better (generally defined as more) hair. Maybe we find an ample coif inherently authoritative; maybe we're just hopelessly shallow. Either way, Americans want their Commander in Chief bright-eyed and bushy-haired.

Just look at history:

1960: Ike's longtime VP loses to a little-known Senator - a Catholic, no less. Richard Nixon: Matted, thinning hair. John F. Kennedy: Fabulous, matinee idol hair. Done.

Eight years later, with Hubert Humphrey's hairline mired in retreat, Nixon's locks suddenly don't look so bad. America gives him a shot. Beatnik Democrats return in four years with the unthinkable: A guy with a comb-over. Surprise: McGovern's swamped in a landslide.

And the list goes on: The lesser-haired Ford loses to the better-haired Carter, who's then bested by the better-haired Reagan. Mondale, of course, doesn't stand a chance against the Black Stallion of Presidential manes: Reagan in a blow-out.

In '88, Democrats wise up and nominate what ought to be a sure thing - thick, ample, Mediterranean hair. But Dukakis' strategists make a crucial mistake: They cover the hair. They put it in a silly helmet and stick it in a tank. The resulting image is inescapable, and suddenly, Americans can't even remember the hair. The rest, as they say, is hairstory.

And so it goes: The full-haired Clinton dispenses with a receding, recessional Bush, whose better-haired son (thanks, ma!) wreaks revenge upon the fast-thinning Gore.

Next at bat: John Kerry's full, wavy locks -- the perfect antidote to the Republican attack machine. But old photos from his Vietnam protest days soon reveal the hair for what it is -- wild, disorderly, too easily blown by the political winds. Kerry is so very...toast.

Which brings us to 2008. Who's the next Presidential hair-apparent?

Certainly not McCain or Giuliani: One strong gust and it's over. The GOP nominee, hands down, will be Mitt Romney. Possessed of an almost inhumanly dense, resplendent head of hair that cleaves to its roots with an almost missionary zeal, Romney's coif is unstoppable. So what if he's changed positions on every major social issue of our day? His hair, at least, has been steadfast.

Democrats have their work cut out for them.

Hillary Clinton has ample tresses, to be sure, but her public struggles with her hair - long, short, headband, no headband - leave the feeling of a politician constantly repositioning. Since her election to the Senate, Clinton seems finally to have settled on a low-key, middle-of-the-road cut, but she's got an uphill battle to convince voters that it isn't just a cover for a more radical style-in-waiting.

Enter Barack Obama, whose trim, exotic scalp holds the promise of a new breed of post-partisan hair (not to mention Halle Berry-style Hollywood glamour). But allegations that Obama experimented with an afro as a youth in Indonesia continue to rattle noisily in the blogosphere.

Better, then, for Democrats to settle on a sure thing: ex-Senator John Edwards. When it comes to inheriting great hair, this humble son of a mill worker hit pay dirt! Not since Shawn Cassidy's heyday has America seen a mop this full and floppy. No surprise, then, that his boyish locks present the toughest challenge to Romney. It's accessible, populist hair vs. sculpted, Reaganesque hair -- a clash of the TRESemmés if ever there was one.

My prediction?

Romney by (what else?) a hair.