There was a piece a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal that took up a topic I addressed last year in my old blog (those hacks are always several months behind me), namely, the physique of presumptive democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.  

My argument back in December was that Barack almost fit the physical mold of most American presidents.  Oval Office-holders have typically tended towards slightly taller and more muscular than average, but Barack, who is reportedly around six-two, probably weighs 175 or 180 (accurate measures of presidential weights are hard to come by), meaning he's a little slighter than average.  I offered to help him put on a few pounds of carefully-placed beef.  

The WSJ views it differently, suggesting that Obama's physical fitness may be seen by voters as another way in which this "elitist" candidate sets himself apart from the common man, citing the example of Bill Clinton as the relatable "everyguy," whose taste for fast food and evident difficulties with his weight made him all the more like us.  The argument is that middle-America thinks this health-and-fitness nonsense is maybe a smidgen precious and self-important.  Back in '04, Robert Gibbs, then an advisor to John Kerry, panicked when his candidate appeared to be assuming a healthier-than-thou stance: 

[A]t the Iowa State Fair, famous for its deep-fried Twinkies and beer booths, Mr. Gibbs noticed Sen. Kerry buying a $4 strawberry smoothie. He made a frantic call to campaign staffers: "Somebody get a f-ing corn dog in his hand -- now!"

I started to gear up to defend fitness snobs like me and Barack Obama, as well as our right to be just as gym-ratty and persnickity in our eating habits as we desire--after all, shouldn't the president, of all people, be fitter than the rest of us, as well as smarter, tougher, more thoughtful, more poised, and all the rest that we expect of our presidents as a matter or course?  

But the final word on this belongs, appropriately, to The Onion.  This video is way funnier than anything I can say about it, and, I dare, say, more accurate than the Wall Street Journal as well.  

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On an entirely unrelated note, there are two recent pieces out from distinctly different sources that pretty much say the same thing:  strength and fitness coach Dan John argues that medium-intensity workouts are for the birds in T-Nation (it's more nuanced than that but that's the main point), and Time/CNN suggests that if you want to lose weight, moderate exercise can't hold a candle to putting in some real hours.  Both articles make sense to me:  all this "take the stairs / park far away from your destination / ten-minutes-twice a day" nonsense may look good on paper, but have you ever met a single really fit person who got that way by making "moderate" lifestyle changes?