Hot veep picks

[Portia]

Part I

Paul Ryan is pretty much my male physical ideal. Thick dark brown hair, crazy limpid pools of blue for eyes, prepster, Irish, yes, even the doinky ears. Nice try to get me to try to vote for you, Romney, but valiant effort, anyway. Which led me to wonder what previous Republican Vice Presidential candidates looked like. Here are my picks for top ten after Ryan:

1. Sarah Palin
2. Wendell Wilkie
3. Theodore Roosevelt
4. Dan "Potatoe" Quayle
5. Charles McNary

The next five are clearly not at the level of the top five, who, in my estimation, would all be considered attractive even if not politicians. The next fall into the "handsome in a distinguished statesmen" kind of way.

6. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (looks like Leonardo DiCaprio here)
7. Charles Dawes
8. Jack Kemp
9. William Miller
10. John Brickner

The rest were "nots."

Any obscure Republican VP pick crushes out there? Who can name which of these 10 were on a winning ticket of the top of their heads?

[Portia]

Naturally, I wondered what the Dems had to offer. Conclusions: the average Democratic VP pick was hotter than the average Republican one (which surprised me). Even their bearded, probably racist Confederate soldier era held up well, and had strong nominees from the Romantic Era right up through the Information Age. Narrowed it down to 11.

1. My clear overall winner, John Calhoun. Those sideburns! Those brooding eyes! That jaw! (Maybe he benefits from being the earliest one here, in a pre-photography age?) I'll happily finish taking off that jacket . . .
2. Sargent Shriver didn't have heiress progeny for nothin'
3. John Edwards
4. Geraldine Ferraro
5. Francis Preston Blair, mustachioed (here he is in his drummer for a Bellingham, WA band days.)
6. Estes Kefauver, nerd chic. If Rivers Cuomo and and Rachel Menken from Mad Men had a lovechild
7. Alben Barkley
8. Henry G. Davis
9. William O. Butler craggy, rugged
10. George Pendleton looks smug, and his beard is kind of scraggly, but he's attractive. Actually, smugness is hot
11. Richard Mentor Johnson his high forehead and middle name make him seem intelligent

So how many losers and winners here, readers? Some of these are pretty obscure!

The Democrats shut out the Republicans on awesome names. Numbers 2, 6, 7, and 11 might seem quirky, until you realize we have a winner with the hirsute Herschel Vespasian Johnson. EPIC. This is in a field with Simon Freakin' Bolivar Buckner (understudy for Brandon Flowers)

[Portia]

Considering that John Calhoun was "best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as something positive, his distrust of majoritarianism, and for pointing the South toward secession from the Union," best not to judge a book by its cover. (Also, he didn't age well.)

[yayfulness]

I'm kind of disappointed in myself for not knowing more than about half a dozen of those names and whether they actually got elected. And sorry, as a straight guy who isn't at all attracted to women more than a couple years older, I can't really contribute to the hotness ratings either.

So basically, I just wrote this post to say that I can't say anything relevant. Because I make sense.

[Digit]

The first image that pops into my head when I read the word limpid is Don Knotts as a fish.

I don't know much about political running mates, but as far as mates of politicians go, I like the looks of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni.

[Craig Jessop]

This is the weirdest thread ever. If I had no other reason to wish for more female VP candidates, this would be enough. (I do have to say that Geraldine Ferraro lacked in that department, and Sarah Palin certainly did not, leaving the female VP field pretty much even.)

[Portia]

The first image that pops into my head when I read the word limpid is Don Knotts as a fish.

I don't know much about political running mates, but as far as mates of politicians go, I like the looks of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni.

French politicians, way hotter. Ségolène Royal, total babe. The woman François Hollande left her for ain't bad either (looks like the mom on Arrested Development). Even Sarkozy and Hollande himself aren't that bad.

@yayfulness, you can score yourself by going to the Wikipedia lists. How'd you do?

And an article about the VP curse. Two truly hilarious quotes from long-dead politicians in there. (I especially like the sailor one.)