Talk:Heights of United States Presidents and presidential candidates

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 2007-02-08. The result of the discussion was Keep.

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Peer review Heights of United States Presidents and presidential candidates has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

There are lots of errors on this page. GWB is 6'0" and there's no way Kerry is taller than 6'3". Others are suspicious. Teddygoff 06:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

He seems to have been removed from the list completely. Many people would argue that it doesn't really matter but there is no objective way you can say he is 6'0". He wears lifts and boots an awful lot and is in around 5'10. --194.125.112.57 16:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, James Polk was no taller than 5'9", NOT the 6'12" listed (That's 7 feet for you in Rio Linda).

Further, Theodore Roosevelt was an even 5'10". Compare photos of him next to McKinley or Taft. At a minimum, refer to the listing for Theodore Roosevelt in The Peoples' Almanac by Wallachinsky and Medved from ca. 1976.

No offense intended, but the information on this seems to be vastly incorrect. For one thing, I know for sure that John Quincy Adams was about 5'2. Can you show a source? Rhymeless 06:30, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No offense taken as I am certainly not any kind of serious scholar, but a search on "shortest president" suggests that many believe Madison was the shortest at 5'4", so if you know something that is contrary to popular belief, please document it if only for my benefit.

It appears that you're entirely right. I could have sworn that I had a book that said otherwise, purchased as a souvenir at the white house when I went there (long gone now) but everywhere on the web seems refute this. Sorry to bother you. (quite embarrassed now) Rhymeless 06:56, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Quite all right; I'm in no position to judge. :)

Contents

[edit] Many of the heights listed here are inaccurate.

John Kerry, is about 6 ft 4 ins. This article suggests he is 6 ft 6 and 3/4 inches tall (taller than Michael Jordan) which is blatantly false.

President George W Bush is not 5 ft 9 1/2 as this article says.G W is infact about 6 ft tall (His National Guard Records list him at 5'11).

Who ever updated the height index as of feb 4, 2006, thankyou for correcting them.

The list contradicted many of the heights found on the presidential height list page, and since that page seemed to jibe better with most other outside sources, I updated this page to match it, or at least the parts I noticed, anyway. -Alex68.110.114.40 05:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't the 1912 section include Taft? At 6'0" he was taller than Wilson, so in 1912 the tallest candidate actually didn't win. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.121.86.46 (talk) 02:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Colors

Could we get some better colors, specifically some that have higher contrast? Also, remember that fully color-blind people can only see shades of grey (...or is it gray? I hate that word.), and that those colors are very similar in shade.

Would be thrilled to update, just don't know what colors I good. I dug around some color-checkers and ended up a great deal more baffled than when I started. Any ideas? jengod 02:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] McClellan

According to "McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union" By Ethan Rafuse (review at http://www.historynet.com/acw/reviews/acwreview0306-1/), George B. McClellan stood "perhaps half a foot below 6 feet tall" ( probably the source of his nickname "Little Mac" ). Tentatively I'm listing his height therefore as 5'6; he certainly must have been much shorter than Lincoln.

[edit] Upcoming Election

Can we add a section for the upcoming election. I think Rudy Giuliani is about 5'9", Hillary Clinton about 5'7" and Barack Obama about 6'1", but these are just estimates. 86.139.60.204 23:23, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pointless

Is this possibly the most pointless article on Wikipedia? 4kinnel 15:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean up metric conversion

I know this might not be important for people in the non-metric World, but someone needs to clean up the metric conversion. 6ft 4 is not 2 meters by any means. Actually 6ft 6 is about 2 meters (and even that is a little less than 2 meters).

anyway, it's an interesting article nevertheless.

[edit] Bill Clinton's height

I would fix it myself, but I don't want to mess anything up, so I'll ask that someone more familiar with the tables take care of it. Clinton's height is 6'2.5" or 1.83m. Source Another source. faithless (speak) 05:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

6'2.5" is in fact 1.89m. That means as well that Clinton was the taller of the candidates in the 92 election. Are there any other sources that verify Clinton's height? If he is 1.89m, then the 92 election in the table needs to be changed to a taller candidate win, which would confirm again the conclusion this article appears to be making on taller candidates.Wikischolar1983 (talk) 12:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
My mistake, 6'2.5" is 1.89m. But you need more sources? Surely the New York Times and Forbes are good enough? :) faithless (speak) 19:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Though the Forbes article was only indicating that Bill Clinton was around 6'2". But never mind, a couple of the external sources at the end of this article also stated that he was 6'2.5", so I guess that's good enough:) I've put his new height in the table and updated the statistics on tall/short winners, which now reflect one more taller candidate win in presidential elections.Wikischolar1983 (talk) 06:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 2008

The 2008 section needs sources. Until I removed them, the only sources for Hilary and Obama were www.celebheights.com, an internet chat forum. Chat sites are the antithesis of the Wikipedia:Verifiability standard -- it's hard for me to think of a less trustworthy source of information. --M@rēino 14:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)