by KEND on Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:25 am
I was watching Julian Casro as a possible democratic candidate, was impressed but history may work against him in terms of height
U.S. Presidents by height order
Abraham Lincoln at 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) surmounts Lyndon B. Johnson as the tallest president.
James Madison, the shortest President, was 5 ft 4 in (163 cm).
Rank No. President Height (in) Height (cm) references
1 16 Abraham Lincoln
6 ft 4 in 193 cm [4]
2 36 Lyndon B. Johnson
6 ft 3 1⁄2 in 192 cm [5][6][7]
3 45 Donald Trump
6 ft 3 in 191 cm [2][8][9]
4 3 Thomas Jefferson
6 ft 2 1⁄2 in 189 cm [10][11]
5 1 George Washington
6 ft 2 in 188 cm [12][13]
21 Chester A. Arthur
6 ft 2 in 188 cm [10]
32 Franklin D. Roosevelt
6 ft 2 in 188 cm [10]
41 George H. W. Bush
6 ft 2 in 188 cm [10][14]
42 Bill Clinton
6 ft 2 in 188 cm [10][14][15][16][17][18]
10 7 Andrew Jackson
6 ft 1 in 185 cm [10][19]
35 John F. Kennedy
6 ft 1 in 185 cm [10][20]
40 Ronald Reagan
6 ft 1 in 185 cm [10]
44 Barack Obama
6 ft 1 in 185 cm [21][22]
14 5 James Monroe
6 ft 0 in 183 cm [10][23]
10 John Tyler
6 ft 0 in 183 cm [10]
15 James Buchanan
6 ft 0 in 183 cm [10]
20 James A. Garfield
6 ft 0 in 183 cm [10]
29 Warren G. Harding
6 ft 0 in 183 cm [10]
38 Gerald Ford
6 ft 0 in 183 cm [10][24]
20 27 William Howard Taft
5 ft 11 1⁄2 in 182 cm [25]
31 Herbert Hoover
5 ft 11 1⁄2 in 182 cm [26]
37 Richard Nixon
5 ft 11 1⁄2 in 182 cm [10][24]
43 George W. Bush
5 ft 11 1⁄2 in 182 cm [18][27][28][29]
24 22, 24 Grover Cleveland
5 ft 11 in 180 cm [10]
28 Woodrow Wilson
5 ft 11 in 180 cm [10][30]
26 34 Dwight D. Eisenhower
5 ft 10 1⁄2 in 179 cm [10]
27 14 Franklin Pierce
5 ft 10 in 178 cm [10]
17 Andrew Johnson
5 ft 10 in 178 cm [10]
26 Theodore Roosevelt
5 ft 10 in 178 cm [10][23]
30 Calvin Coolidge
5 ft 10 in 178 cm [10]
31 39 Jimmy Carter
5 ft 9 1⁄2 in 177 cm [10][24]
32 13 Millard Fillmore
5 ft 9 in 175 cm [10]
33 Harry S. Truman
5 ft 9 in 175 cm [10]
34 19 Rutherford B. Hayes
5 ft 8 1⁄2 in 174 cm [10][31]
35 9 William Henry Harrison
5 ft 8 in 173 cm [10]
11 James K. Polk
5 ft 8 in 173 cm [10][32]
12 Zachary Taylor
5 ft 8 in 173 cm [10][23]
18 Ulysses S. Grant
5 ft 8 in 173 cm [33]
39 6 John Quincy Adams
5 ft 7 1⁄2 in 171 cm [34]
40 2 John Adams
5 ft 7 in 170 cm [10][35]
25 William McKinley
5 ft 7 in 170 cm [10]
42 8 Martin Van Buren
5 ft 6 in 168 cm [36]
23 Benjamin Harrison
5 ft 6 in 168 cm [37]
44 4 James Madison
5 ft 4 in 163 cm [10][38]
Electoral success as a function of height
Graph of winner v. loser heights in presidential elections from 1789 - 2004
Various folk wisdoms about U.S. presidential politics put forward the view that the taller of the two major-party candidates always wins or almost always wins since the advent of the televised presidential debate.
There is more data if the relationship of electoral success to height difference starts from the year 1900, rather than from the beginning of televised debates. In the twenty-eight presidential elections between 1900 and 2011, eighteen of the winning candidates have been taller than their opponents, while eight have been shorter, and two have been of the same height. On average the winner was 1.0 inch (2.5 cm) taller than the loser.
The claims about taller candidates winning almost all modern presidential elections is still pervasive, however. Examples of such views include:
• In Ray Bradbury's 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, when Mildred and her friends talk about the success of one presidential candidate over the other in a recent election, they talk only about the attractiveness of the winning candidate over the loser. One of their points is "You just don't go running a little short man like that against a tall man."
• A 1988 article in the Los Angeles Times fashion section about a haberdasher devoted to clothing shorter men included a variation of the tale: "Stern says he just learned that Dukakis is 5 feet, 8 inches. 'Did you know,' he adds, noticeably disappointed, 'that since 1900 the taller of the two candidates always wins?'"[39]
• A 1997 book called How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You discusses the issue in a section about the importance of height: "What about height? One assumes the taller the better, because our culture venerates height. In fact, practically every president elected in the United States since 1900 was the taller of the two candidates."[40]
• A chapter titled "Epistemology at the Core of Postmodernism" in the 2002 book Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmodernisms makes this observation: "I remember the subversive effect the observation had on me that in every U.S. presidential race, the taller of the two candidates had been elected. It opened up space for a counterdiscourse to the presumed rationality of the electoral process."[41]
• A 1975 book called First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others notes: "Elevator Shoes, Anyone? One factor which has a far-reaching influence on how people are perceived, at least in American society, is height. From 1900 to 1968 the man elected U.S. president was always the taller of the two candidates. (Richard Nixon was slightly shorter than George McGovern.)"[42]
• A 1978 book titled The Psychology of Person Identification states: "They also say that every President of the USA elected since the turn of the [20th] century has been the taller