The Crossfit Candidate

The hottest fitness craze (some say cult) is something called Crossfit that’s been featured in numerous publications in the last few months, such as The New York Times and health magazines.

Crossfit bills itself as the toughest workout you’ll ever do. Their slogans range from “Smoked Like Cheap Crack” to “Our Workout Can Beat Up Your Workout.” Or “Your Workout Is Our Warmup” and “Rest Later.”

As a beginning Crossfitter, I can tell you this thing is brash, unapologetic and extremely challenging. A typical workout might be 100 pull-ups followed by 100 pushups and 100 squats. With a set of 100 situps to finish it off. Sometimes it will be 30 squat cleans (a power-lifting move), 30 pull-ups and an 800-meter run. Followed by a repeat of the whole thing. And then again for a third round. For time.

And every day is different. No 10 reps, three sets, then hitting the treadmill.

A lot of people think they are fairly fit. Then they participate in a Crossfit session. No matter how fit, almost all end up on the floor after a typical workout looking like this.

When the present presidential candidates started the campaign, they were all political couch potatoes to one degree or another. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has been through a little more than the others, but even her last election was a gimme where she won with 67 percent and took all but four counties in New York. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hasn’t faced a difficult campaign in eight years and even then came out of the primary season as a media darling. And Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has never had a difficult federal election. His campaign for the Senate was almost a freebie.

After the grueling primary season, the emerging candidates will think they’ve weathered tough storms and they are pretty politically fit. Not unlike the typical globo gym-goer who does 30 minutes on the treadmill, a few arm curls and a machine or two. But the candidates will soon hit the grueling general election — the political Crossfit — and find that the “training” on the elliptical machine just didn’t get it done.

With the current Democratic primary distracting the media, now is the time for tough political action by McCain. This is the time for the biggest push on fundraising, organizational discipline, driving local media with a tough travel schedule to states where there will not be time to go in September and October and to push the campaign staff as if they were locked in a primary battle.

Alternatively, when either Obama or Clinton emerges from the primary, it will be time to go full-bore even though the campaign and candidate will feel like it’s time for another Caribbean vacation. If they want to be the fittest candidate, that is the wrong workout.