"How did everyone like the salad? I thought it was OK, but it needed just a little more scalp oil and a pinch of dandruff."

Look out! It's the wit of Amy Klobuchar. She'll never shake that eating-salad-with-a-comb story, so she's going with self-deprecating humor.

You never know. I once thought Donald Trump could never be elected President because his hair was so weird.

Maybe there's something mystical about hair — connecting celebrities to the people. I remember how The Beatles got to us with hair. And in politics, it does seem that the candidate with the best hair wins.

It might jinx you to come out and say it, of course. John Kerry, on his first day of campaigning with his veep choice, the ill-fated John Edwards, proclaimed:

"We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America. And we've got better hair. I'll tell you, that goes a long way."

My blogged reaction at the time, July 2004, was:

That bulbous wig of a hairdo Kerry's been using to offset his lengthy face is good hair? That flappy, fine fringe accentuating Edwards' babyish looks is good hair? Please! For decades, I've been groaning about the outdated Beatle haircuts worn by aging Baby Boomers. Long hair is a young man's style that makes an older man look like an unattractive woman! Beatle styling, with combed down bangs in front, belongs in the 1960s--early 70s at the latest. It's as if 20 years from now, some guy were to run for President and wear his hair like this. I realize practically every man in Congress is making the same mistake of keeping the Beatle do alive, but could someone please tell these people how terribly estranged from any sense of style these men are? The only one of the current candidates with a respectable hairstyle is George Bush....

And George Bush won, so by my lights the candidate with the best hair did win in 2004, as in all the other elections, including the ones with our last bald president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.



The question of Trump's hair was immensely complicated in 2016, when his opponent was a woman whose oft-changing hair had been a matter of public inquiry for a quarter century. But she chose to forefront the hair comparison. She made a whole routine out of it with Jimmy Fallon...

She says (slightly garbling what must have been a prepared line): "Have you ever been able to let him touch — let you touch his hair?" And then: "Have you ever really touched it?" When Jimmy says no, she says: "You wanna touch mine?" Jimmy grabs a hank and gives it a sturdy pull. The gesture says: This is not a wig. And he shouts: "It's real! It's real!" He waves his hands about joyously and — with the band playing celebratory music – adds: "And it's got wave and it's fantastic, you guys, and it smells great!" He's laughing heartily and she's laughing heartily.

... and that led Jimmy Fallon — when Trump later appeared on his show — to grab Trump's hair the same way he'd grabbed Hillary's. And that normalized Trump's ultra-weird hair.

But back to Amy Klobuchar. That comb is the most famous thing about her, and she can't lose it. She's got to find a way to work with it. And the Democrats need a way to defeat the President with the absurd hair. Well, Amy's got the comb. If rock breaks scissors, and scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock, then surely, comb conquers hair.