Will Chris Christie throw a temper tantrum?
By Richard Cohen,
WashPost
Published: October 3
Chris Christie must have spent the last week feeling a bit like one of those bodies on a crime show. He was poked and prodded, turned this way and that, examined from head to toe. He was found to be too fat, too aggressive, too undisciplined, too angry and — not insignificantly — too late into the race. Running for president is like intensive psychoanalysis. You find out a lot about yourself.
Right off the bat, Christie was denounced as criminally obese not just by some important columnists — Eugene Robinson and Michael Kinsley (both of them infuriatingly trim, in my estimation) — but, more importantly, on “The View,” the immensely popular syndicated television program presided over by Barbara Walters. It was not Walters, though, who found the Republican governor of New Jersey too oval for the Oval Office, but — most vociferously — Joy Behar and Sherri Shepherd, comedians both. This, though, is no laughing matter.
They raised health issues. They raised willpower issues. They raised self-discipline issues — all of which are real, because, among other things, in a presidential campaign anything is an issue. Recall that just recently Barack Obama’s religion and place of birth were issues. Both were easily documented — Obama had all his papers in order — but questions persisted anyway and the Obama campaign, and finally the president himself, had to deal with them. Christie, I’m sure, was born somewhere — but can he prove it?
At the same time that Christie was being told to lose weight — an issue that will fade in time — others were surely preparing a game book about how to handle him in one of the many presidential debates coming up. The book would certainly say that he should be jabbed, incited and challenged. The purpose is to have him lose his temper. He has, in the past, responded to a question regarding where his children go to school with a dismissive “none of your business.” (Really? Try that on one of the Sunday shows.) In the prelude to Hurricane Irene, he ordered everyone to “get the hell off the beach,” a bit of Joisey speak that might go unappreciated in Mason City and other places in tranquil Iowa.
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: October 3
Chris Christie must have spent the last week feeling a bit like one of those bodies on a crime show. He was poked and prodded, turned this way and that, examined from head to toe. He was found to be too fat, too aggressive, too undisciplined, too angry and — not insignificantly — too late into the race. Running for president is like intensive psychoanalysis. You find out a lot about yourself.
Right off the bat, Christie was denounced as criminally obese not just by some important columnists — Eugene Robinson and Michael Kinsley (both of them infuriatingly trim, in my estimation) — but, more importantly, on “The View,” the immensely popular syndicated television program presided over by Barbara Walters. It was not Walters, though, who found the Republican governor of New Jersey too oval for the Oval Office, but — most vociferously — Joy Behar and Sherri Shepherd, comedians both. This, though, is no laughing matter.
They raised health issues. They raised willpower issues. They raised self-discipline issues — all of which are real, because, among other things, in a presidential campaign anything is an issue. Recall that just recently Barack Obama’s religion and place of birth were issues. Both were easily documented — Obama had all his papers in order — but questions persisted anyway and the Obama campaign, and finally the president himself, had to deal with them. Christie, I’m sure, was born somewhere — but can he prove it?
At the same time that Christie was being told to lose weight — an issue that will fade in time — others were surely preparing a game book about how to handle him in one of the many presidential debates coming up. The book would certainly say that he should be jabbed, incited and challenged. The purpose is to have him lose his temper. He has, in the past, responded to a question regarding where his children go to school with a dismissive “none of your business.” (Really? Try that on one of the Sunday shows.) In the prelude to Hurricane Irene, he ordered everyone to “get the hell off the beach,” a bit of Joisey speak that might go unappreciated in Mason City and other places in tranquil Iowa.
(More here.)
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