[popsicesHoupe]

Oh dear...


Mayor John V. Lindsay, visiting the Florida Keys in 1972, may not have been presidential timber, but he certainly knew how to sunbathe.


John Lindsay,on the campaign trail for the mayor's office, went shirtless along Rockaway Beach on July 4, 1965.


Eliot Spitzer in the sun in Puerto Rico in 2006.


Joseph L. Bruno, shown landing the punch, says his weight hasn't changed.


The Clintons in 1998, on the beach in St. Thomas.


Robert F. Kennedy, then attorney general of the United States, didn't make it across the wake while water skiing off Hyannis Port.


Robert F. Kennedy was the skipper on July 30, 1961, giving relatives a ride near Hyannis Port. Left to right, Maria Shriver, Courtney Kennedy, Bobby Shriver, Robert Kennedy Jr., Pat Prusyewski (a ward of the Shriver family), Mr. Kennedy, David Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy.


It's supposed to look spontaneous, Mayor Bloomberg's spokesman says. That's why the mayor left his shirt on when he jumped into the pool with a group of children.


Andrew and Mario Cuomo suited up in the 1980s.


Ed Koch, shown on St. Patrick's Day in 2001, says there has been no demand to see him shirtless.

December 24, 2008
Looking Good? It All Depends

By JAMES BARRON

If you are a public official — a mayor, say, or a member of the City Council — you have policies to make. You have budgets to argue about. You have constituents’ letters to answer.

And now you have really important questions to grapple with: How good would you look if you were photographed wearing only a bathing suit? What would that do to your approval rating?

Those questions pushed aside the usual long lists of legislative priorities for 2009 after photographs surfaced showing President-elect Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, in nothing but a bathing suit. The New York Post ran one on its front page on Tuesday.

Some public officials said they hadn’t seen a photograph like that since the days of John F. Kennedy. Some remembered Mayor John V. Lindsay in the Florida Keys during his short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

And some could only wish they had been photographed that way. Or looked more like, say, Jack LaLanne.

“I was never someone they wanted to take a picture of with his shirt off,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. His successor, David N. Dinkins, hoping to go home from the hospital after heart valve surgery, looked at the Obama photographs and said, “I wish I looked so good.”

But Joseph L. Bruno, who resigned from the State Senate in July after 14 years as majority leader, remained certain: “I’d be suitable for framing,” he declared on Tuesday. Mr. Bruno, 79, said he weighed the same as when he was a champion boxer in the Army — 176 pounds, though he added that over the years “the weight has shifted, just slightly.”

New York mayors and parks commissioners could shed their shirts if they wanted — once a year, just in time for summer, they attend the opening of a city pool. But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been photographed in the water with his shirt on.

“The pictures miss the premise of the event, which is that the mayor spontaneously jumps into the pool with the kids,” said Stu Loeser, a spokesman for the mayor.

“They aren’t really expecting to see a guy they usually see on TV jump into a pool,” he said. “Taking his shirt off would be to give up the surprise in advance.”

All right, but that is a bathing suit below the mayor’s waist, isn’t it?
The Obama photographs have made some officials take stock of more than political talking points. Councilman Eric N. Gioia of Queens said that the moment he saw the photograph of Mr. Obama, “I dropped and did 50 pushups.”

“My wife has been laughing about it all day,” he said. “She told me, ‘You’ve got pretty good abs but your pecs just can’t compete.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/ny...shirtless.html