Barack Obama may be untested and have a name that lends itself to derision, but one advantage he has over the other candidates for the 2008 Democratic nomination, a race that's already heating up, is no bad hair days.  This is the same advantage Deval Patrick had over all the other gubernatorial candidates in last year's race, although Kerry Healey was shielded from serious criticism on account of her party affiliation.

Because, the truth is, it's the right-wing and right-leaning media that seem obsessed with the Democrats' hair, and not the other way around.  Don't ask me how or why people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly become hair czars every election cycle, but they do. 

The first volley in the 2008 Hair Wars was fired last week by The Globe's own Joan Vennochi in what was a totally gratuitous link from her op-ed column about how Barack Obama is no JFK to a YouTube video of John Edwards doing his hair for "two minutes and one painful second" while "I Feel Pretty" plays in the background.

Newsflash:  Politicians use hairspray! 

This is Joan Vennochi, by the way, who might have benefited from spending a couple of minutes doing her own hair before slagging off Edwards for spending a couple on his: 


Honey, don't even get me started.

You'd think the Edwards-as-Breck-Girl joke would have played itself out by now, but that's the thing about conservatives:  they can tell the same recycled bad joke over and over again—sometimes for decades—and always find it fresh.  God love 'em.  Now that the bandwagon's rolling, expect all the bad-hair whistle-blowers to jump onboard. 

(Vennochi tried to cover her ass by making like she was bemoaning the rough ride politicians inevitably have on their rode to The White House: "So far, Obama loves the media, and the media love him back," she wrote. "But there's peril in its infinite 21st-century embrace.  For an illustration, go to YouTube.com, search 'John Edwards hair.'"  A tad passive-aggressive, Joan, but nice bangs—you might want to try a turtleneck to cover up that adams apple, though, hon). 

The implication in Edward's case is obvious.  In the last round of our national Hair Wars both he and whatsisname—the Junior Senator from Massachusetts—were derided regularly as vain, decadent, French-speaking girlie men, so concerned with their elaborate Louis XIV hairdos—two minutes and one second combing one's hair! That's an eternity when there are kittens needing rescuing from trees and damsels tied to train tracks waiting to be saved and nations needing liberating!  No time for those tresses!—that they could not be trusted to run the country.     

Mitt Romney, who looks like a greasy B-grade actor who's just walked off the set of Another World, has been described by an admiring press as "handsome" and "dashing."  Do you think he wakes up with his pompadour all greased up like that naturally? 

Hillary is another one, it goes without saying.  We will be hearing a lot about Hillary's hair in the coming year—much, much more than about any old universal healthcare plan, you can bet.  The implication is slightly different here, though.  Here it is a not-so-subtle indictment of the "weaker sex."  Of course Hillary is concerned about her hair, say the pundits: she is a woman, after all.   

Poor Hillary's been through it all before.  First derided by the right for not taking enough care with her appearance ("she must be a lesbian!" they hissed), she was then derided as "a typical female" for getting a new do.  In politics all personal evolution is (often rightly) viewed with skepticism, but the problem with Hillary back in 1992 was that she hadn't changed her hairstyle since 1972.  It was her lack of caring enough about keeping up with the styles that marked her as suspect.  When, in answer to the great hue and cry over that, she tried to keep up with the times, it was proof positive, according to her detractors, that she's nothing but a power-hungry political changeling.  She can't win.

(Speaking of which, I won't get into the Hillary-haters on the left who say she's unelectable—that's a topic for another day.  All I'll say about that now is: if George W. Bush was electable, there's virtually no one who's not, aside from John Kerry, of course.)

Now that the game is on, I'll try to keep tabs and report back to you occasionally on this latest installment of The Hair Wars, but I warn you: the prettier the politicians, the uglier the fight.