COULD MARK RIPPETOE SAVE AMERICAN POLITICS? My Barbell Cure For Flabby Brains.

I am constantly reading stories about the connection between weight training and cognition. Apparently, regularly lifting weights keeps the brain in fighting trim. This affects everybody, not just seniors. If you pump iron a couple of times a week, it can help slow memory loss and improve cognitive skills and generally help you behave in a more intelligent fashion.

This got me to thinking about the deplorable cognitive skills we see in most politicians. Politicians are so busy gasbagging and kissing babies and raising money that they don’t get to exercise on a regular basis. Could this explain why they seem so dumb? Politicians regularly forget where Sri Lanka and Neptune are and have trouble remembering the capital of Slovenia or who won the Crimean War. They often say things that are just plain wrong: for example, that high taxes are good for you.

The public naturally assumes that pols are just poorly informed and even stupid, but this may not be the case. Maybe they don’t pump enough iron. If they worked out a couple of times a week and kept their brains in tiptop shape, they’d probably go back to being the thoughtful and intelligent people that they were when they first went into politics. I can’t help noticing that most of the people in Congress who seem really smart look totally ripped. . . .

Increasingly, when I have a serious matter to attend to, I seek out professionals who look like they pump iron.

Hmm.