UK Guardian on the candidates hair!!!

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1131967,00.html

Take a look at the line-up of Democratic presidential hopefuls battling it out in tonight's crucial primary. One factor unites these, the brightest and best of the Democratic party: really bad hair. Comb-overs, toilet-brush quiffs and Brylcreem addictions are the order of the day. Whatever happens tonight, it's looking like Americans will be faced with a stark choice this November: George Bush, or that bloke with the terrible hair.

The man to beat right now is John Kerry, who has not only the momentum of his Iowa victory behind him but initials that any presidential candidate would sell his grandmother for (his middle name is Forbes). His competitors, however, will surely draw some solace from the fact that Kerry has the worst hair of all. On a bad day he looks half man, half badger. He could pour on his body weight in John Frieda's magic fuzz-taming Frizz Ease lotion, and he would still look like Worzel Gummidge with a grown-out buzz cut.

Like Howard Dean, the man he overtook to reach pole position, he has salt-and-pepper hair - a perfect catch-all blend of youthful vigour and gravitas. Like Kerry, however, Dean has little else going for him in the barnet department. I find it hard to trust the judgment of a man who looks at that side parting in the mirror and doesn't spot that it is a good inch too close to his left ear, and so makes his head look completely square. Combined with his Popeye posture and strange manic shrieking, this has the unfortunate effect of making him look like a man on bad steroids.

According to American Elle magazine, John Edwards is "the sexiest man in politics". He is 50, but has a healthy head of glossy chestnut hair in a breezily sideswept college-sweetheart style. He looks uncannily young and, slightly creepily, at least 15 years out of date, as if he has just walked out of a 1985 high-school yearbook photo, or a Brat Pack movie. I imagine he defends the style on the grounds that the same look did John F Kennedy no harm - Kerry may have the initials, but Edwards has the look. Which leaves just Wesley Clark. His hair is a rather dashing silver blonde, à la Helen Mirren; He has a faintly absurd combover, the sort of thing a silver fox of a retired general who was Ben Affleck's dad would have in a Hollywood film, but he gets away with it because he is, after all, a retired general. And Madonna likes him.