The Trump family may well have invented the art of standing, by raising the possibility that it could be done wrong. We are bipedal animals. Often we must be stationary. People handle that in different ways. Their ways were manifestly wrong. From there, it became clear that there had to be a right way to do it, and while the secret axioms of standing might still await discovery by our finest physiologists, we can at least look to the patriarch and his sons for counterexamples. With the drama heightened by flared suit jackets and voluptuous overcoats, the world regarded, time and again, just how precariously Donald Trump's weight was distributed between the front half and back half of his feet. Close your eyes and you can picture him: Teetering forward as if double-checking the height of a dive ... lurching forward as if on a nonexistent hoverboard ... cutting a figure that could be gilded and appended to the plastic pedestal of a trophy (for Worst Stander).
Trump is no longer among them, but the Group of Seven leaders of the world's biggest economies are gathered in coastal England this week to decide whether or not the world's poor should get access to COVID-19 vaccines. Let's ask the big questions—who is good at standing and who is not?
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel (dignified elbow bend, high symmetry)
- U.S. President Joe Biden (you're doing great buddy)
- Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (understated power)
- Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihido Suga (duck feet add sculptural aspect)
- President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (fine elbow bend but fretful hands)
- President of the European Council Charles Michel (a little too rustic for me)
- French President Emmanuel Macron (shoulders lack teamwork)
- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (urinal stance and "aw shucks" hands)
- Getting hit by a Segway
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
