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Obama successor: short, fat white man As the glamour of Barack Obama fades, Americans will turn to entirely different presidential candidates next time, says Toby Harnden. You could call it the revenge of the ugly white guys. After electing a handsome sleek, biracial - and untested - man as President last time, Americans may well be ready for something entirely different in 2012. Remember that you heard it here first: make way for the short, pudgy, balding white fellow who's been there and got the scars - and the results - to prove it. In many respects, Barack Obama was the ultimate candidate for the television age. He looked fantastic and sounded wonderful. He soared above politics and made people feel better about themselves. Ability to get things done? Track record? Such petty considerations seemed beside the point in 2008 for Obama was the very culmination of history. It was almost as if the then Senator for Illinois symbolised the end of politics, the point at which the perfect candidate drew a line under grubby partisanship. Now, Americans have woken up from that dream and are living with the hangover. Neither history nor politics ended when Obama's ascended to the Oval Office. The recession is biting, unemployment is still hovering just below 10 per cent, the deficit is soaring and there is still gridlock in Washington. Having elected two Senators as President and Vice-President for the first time since 1960, Americans are likely to look once again towards the more traditional stable for commanders-in-chief - the governor's mansions. As the Republican challengers to Obama begin to prepare the ground for their 2012 runs, two hitherto unlikely potential candidates are gaining support among party insiders. Before Obama, neither would have had a prayer. Mitch Daniels, described by the "Washington Post" as Indiana's "diminutive governor" sports what looks suspiciously like a combover. He's the kind of geek who seemed straight from central casting as head of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush when I interviewed him in 2001. In what Americans for some unfathomable reason refer to as "the Hoosier state", Daniels has been a quiet star, securing bipartisan support for a Healthy Indiana programme Indiana that provides health insurance for blue collar workers, cutting property taxes and turning an $800 billion deficit into a surplus. Daniels remarked to Ross Douthat of the New York Times that "I've never seen a president of the United States when I look in the mirror" (which instantly sets himself apart from all 100 Senators). Douthat duly noted that Daniels would be the baldest President since Dwight Eisenhower, who left office in 1961. Haley Barbour has more hair than Daniels but isn't much taller and if elected would be the most portly president since William Howard Taft, who occupied the White House from 1909 to 1913. The Mississippi governor has a certain rumpled panache and Southern charm. I first bumped into him in a casino in his home state - where he later came to personify executive competence as he dealt masterfully with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while neighbouring Louisiana lurched towards catastrophe. Barbour - who has a political brain second to none - has always been dismissed as a possible presidential contender. That's partly because he has the perfect face for radio but also because he was a big-time lobbyist in Washington whose firm represented the tobacco industry. But while Obama sanctimoniously instituted grand new rules to ban lobbyists from his administration and then immediately granted himself exceptions, at least with Barbour is up front about things. So could he really have a tilt at the White House? The door is ajar. "If you see me losing 40 pounds that means I'm either running or have cancer," he quipped a fortnight ago.. All this could be a problem for the likes of Mitt Romney - a.k.a. "Matinee Mitt" - the buff, chiselled-jawed hunk who has not stopped running for President full-time since he lost out in 2008. And for Sarah Palin, who would be a celebrity candidate seeking to oust a celebrity president if she was pitted against Obama. It might even make John McCain, who used to describe himself as "older than dirt, more scars than Frankenstein" when he was running against Obama, wonder whether he should resurrect that combover from the 1980s and have another go next time. I'm not going to predict who'll succeed Obama. But I'll wager it will be someone whiter, shorter, uglier, fatter and balder who won't be able to deliver half as good a speech as the current commander-in-chief can.
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