It is well known that in a political with two candidates, they become indistinguishable. Irrelevant matters then become important. Thus, good teeth and big hair are thought to be essential for a presidential run in the US. It turns out there is more truth to this statement then one would think.
Armstrong, Green, Jones and Wright perform an interesting experiment. Looking for a population that would not recognize candidates, they went to Australia, New Zealand and ... Oklahoma. Students were asked to rank candidates by competence from photographs, discarding those they recognized. The winners were Clinton and Obama for the Democrats, and McCain for the Republicans. Not bad for an experiments conducted in the early Summer 2007, when McCain was just #4 in the polls...
So much for the usefulness of the platforms and endless debates.
Some study I cannot find argued that being beautiful or tall increased your wages. Appearances matter, and I guess especially so for a public person.
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