Winning Campaigns Are Laid On Firm Foundations
New Hampshire is a make-or-break state for presidential candidates. A makeup-or-break state, to be precise.
Manchester cosmetician Kriss Soterion is again busy buffing political complexions, doing the makeup for Lamar Alexander, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole and Steve Forbes in last week’s Republican candidate debate.
“The most important thing is they don’t shine, and taking care of the little imperfections,” says Soterion, who charges $100 an hour. “But that’s not so different from working on a bride that needs to look good for guests at the wedding and for the album.”
The toughest pol to polish? “I’d rather not say,” said Soterion, “but you know him really well. He has dark circles under his eyes, and his eyes get really puffy.” (Hint: he won.)
Loose talk
A spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., on whether he would create a World Wide Web site for his re-election campaign (in U.S. News & World Report): “Our constituency doesn’t hang out on computers.”
What happens to birthday balloons? Inflation
John Kenneth Galbraith turns 87 today.
There’s no guarantee he’d do the right thing
Film director Spike Lee on potential presidential contender Colin Powell: “Personally I don’t trust the guy. Any black man, to me, to be in charge of the largest army in the world, is suspect … So what happens if he is given the decision that all ghettos in the United States of America have to be surrounded by the Army or a bomb has to be dropped or we have to invade Africa or something?”
That doesn’t seem like the target audience
We recently reported that Powell lists Dave Barry’s “Complete Guide to Guys” among his top 10 books. So what’s Barry been reading lately? Richard Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes: The Way to the White House,” among others. “It’s a big chunk of a book,” Barry told Entertainment Weekly. “If we were to drop one copy of it on Bosnia …”
Guess folks aren’t buying the Republican plot
House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s book “To Renew America” apparently isn’t living up to its early hype. According to the New York Daily News, HarperCollins expects to sell 400,000 copies - 250,000 fewer than were printed.
Victims? Just people who stopped breathing
Jacques Le Blanc, France’s ambassador to New Zealand, is none too thrilled with that country’s media for their reporting on French underground nuclear tests. “I do not like this word ‘bomb,”’ he told the National Press Club. “It is not a bomb. It is a device which is exploding.”
Must be thinking of the right to bare arms
When Mikhail Gorbachev’s pants were late coming back from the cleaner during a recent visit to Kentucky, the former Soviet leader asked to borrow his interpreter’s trousers. “Why wear any?” the interpreter replied. “This is America.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino