With Lindsey Graham out, Rand Paul is now the shortest of the Republican presidential candidates and it must have showed.

Appearing on The View today, seated next to his wife Kelley, the first question posed to the candidate by panelist Joy Behar was about his height.

'You know, I have to ask you before we get into this, how tall are you?' Behar asked.

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Rand Paul visited the set of The View today and was immediately questioned by Joy Behar: 'How tall are you?' she asked the petite Kentucky senator

Rand Paul joked that he was 6-foot-four, explaining that basketball players always tack on a few inches. In reality he stands at 5'8,'' which he eventually admitted on television

Paul immediately lied.

'This may surprise you – 6'4'',' he answered, getting a, 'no you're not,' as Behar's response.

'Haven't you ever looked at the basketball program?' Paul asked. 'Everybody that is 5'8'' is 5'10,'' everyone's that 5'10'' is 6'0''.

'I'm 5'8,'' but you know what I think – this is serious – I think size matters,' Paul concluded.

Behar looked amused and gave an, 'you do?'

'I think the size of your brain matters,' Paul answered.

Then co-host Paula Faris jumped in.

'I think that's why you've been married to your wife Kelley for 25 years, the size of her brain,' she said.

Paul's diminutive size might be one of the factors that he's not attracted a lot of attention from voters.

His current national average, according to Real Clear Politics, stands at just 3 percent.

Historically, the shorter politicians have struck out.

Since 1900, the taller guy has won the presidential election 19 times, while the shorter person has won only eight times, with George W. Bush being counted among the shorties. Twice in that time period, the candidates have been the same height.

Rand and Kelley Paul were caught arriving at The View's studio today. During the segment the senator talked about his height, why he hates small talk and President Obama's gun plan

Rand Paul said he's perceived as 'grumpy' on the campaign trail because he doesn't care much for small talk and would rather delve into the issues

Last March, as candidates were getting ready to announce, conservative columnist Ann Coulter wrote off Paul, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, for being too short.

'Rubio and Paul are as tall as my iPod,' she said on Fox, according to U.S. News. 'You can't run a short candidate.'

Bloomberg Politics said that Rand Paul might have a 'Dukakis problem.' Like Paul, Michael Dukakis – a presidential loser to George H.W. Bush in 1988 – measured 5-foot-8.

During his View appearance, Rand Paul also mentioned another aspect of his candidacy that's been dragging him down – his personality.

'People report this. They say, "He's grumpy or not happy on the campaign trail,"' Paul explained.

He said his wife is a big help.

'We probably would have like two friends without her,' he said. 'We have so many friends, we have to juggle them because we're so well liked,'

But Paul just isn't a fan of small talk, which he perceives as 'empty conversation.'

'I'm just not that interested in that,' the Kentucky senator said.

'Sometimes just greeting somebody for the first time, I'm maybe not that good at it,' Rand Paul said. 'I love – I was at a senior center yesterday and we had a great debate [about] social security reform – I'm happy to mix it up.'



Rand Paul is quite a bit shorter than Comedy Central's Larry Wilmore. Paul admitted on The View today that he was just 5-foot-8, after first joking that he was over 6-feet tall

With Sen. Lindsey Graham gone from the presidential roster, Rand Paul is now the shortest man running for the job

The five hosts and the Pauls got into some slightly more serious territory as well.

Kelley Paul explained why she, eventually, decided she wanted her husband to run for president.

'There might have been some hypnosis involved, bribery, arm twisting,' she said. 'No, seriously, in the end I just decided I didn't want to make any decisions based on fear of what could happen.'

Kelley Paul noted how her husband's views on foreign policy differ from the other Republicans, and Hillary Clinton too, and said she wanted his voice out there.

Rand Paul tends to take a more isolationist approach to foreign policy, saying in April he was against the U.S. being involved in 'frivolous' wars, according to the Guardian.

'I respect him for his ideas, and I didn't want fear of the unknown to be the thing that stopped him,' the candidate's wife said. 'When you love someone, that's what you want.'

Whoopi Goldberg and Candace Cameron Bure also wanted to talk to Paul about the gun control measures that President Obama tearfully introduced yesterday at the White House.

Paul, like his Republican counterparts, said he was against Obama's executive actions on constitutional grounds. Paul also suggested that Obama come to Congress if the president wants to see anything on guns done.

'The problem though is if we allow the precedent of a congress not passing laws and the president doing it, you might get very dangerous things, like let's say internment of the Japanese or let's say spying on all the civil rights leaders or spying on the war protesters,' Paul said, his libertarian leanings on full display.

In the case of guns, Paul said he feared a national gun registration. He suggested he didn't want the federal government to know where all the citizens' guns were at all times.

Paul and Goldberg did a little back and forth on automatic versus semi-automatic weapons, but the senator mainly tried to beat the drum of executive overreach.

'Let's say we had a terrible president that you didn't like from another party and that president said 'The View,' you should hear the things they're saying on 'The View.' We should limit their speech,' he began as one example.

'We should register the journalists and then we should have an approval board,' he continued.