Opinion: President Obama hits his head on airplane door like a mortal
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Well, it had to come sometime. Probably better to get your presidential klutz moment over with earlier than later.
President Obama was boarding his Marine One helicopter on the White House South Lawn to reenter the country and sell the urgent need for his economic stimulus package. And, of course, polite presidents must wave to the crowds -- even the sometimes nonexistent ones -- that the ubiquitous cameras don’t see. So he waved.
And BANG, the 6-foot, 1.5-inch new commander-in-chief whacked the back of his head on the chopper door.
Now, maybe David Axelrod told him to do that to demonstrate the president is suffering along with regular Americans. Not. President George W. Bush banged his noggin like that too once. President Ford slipped on wet plane stairs. President Carter saw a crazy rabbit or something.
Obama, of course, is a couple inches taller than Bush. But he’s not the tallest chief executive in our history. Obama’s Republican patron saint Abraham Lincoln holds that distinction; he was 6-4.
So Honest Abe would be a center guarding guard Obama in any pickup basketball game they got going in Springfield on Lincoln’s 200th birthday Thursday. Except in Lincoln’s time there were few photo ops and basketball hadn’t been invented by Canadian James Naismith yet.
Still, it’d be interesting to get a game of H-O-R-S-E going among presidents. LBJ was second tallest, followed by Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton at 6-foot-21/2, George Washington and George H.W. Bush at 6-2, and Ronald Reagan and Andrew Jackson at 6-1.
Most Americans think of early presidents as being about 18 inches tall because the paintings were largely head and shoulders. So who do you think was the shortest POTUS?* (Scroll down or click on the ‘Read more’ line for the answer.) Meanwhile, here’s the video:
--Andrew Malcolm
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And the shrimpiest president of the United States was: