“We never repent of having eaten too little” — Thomas Jefferson
August 17, 2011
Gov. CHRIS CHRISTIE
I caught a few minutes of Ann Coulter’s appearance on one of the Sunday talk shows this week, and found that by not tuning in earlier I had missed hearing her reasons for promoting Chris Christie as a Republican presidential candidate.
Apparently, it wasn’t a half-hearted endorsement; I heard her refer to the governor as “my first love.”
Coulter is not the first person to make this case. Christie is a controversial figure in terms of his public policy and his style, but he seems to be developing a following around the country.
Still this kind of talk has an unfamiliar ring to us in New Jersey because, except for Bill Bradley’s failed attempt to win the Democratic nomination in 2000, making presidents has not been our thing in recent decades.
Even the two we contributed in the distant past had imperfect credentials. Woodrow Wilson wasn’t born in New Jersey, and Grover Cleveland – who was born here and is buried here – spent most of his life someplace else.
GROVER CLEVELAND
Christie hasn’t lent much credibility to the idea that he would be a willing candidate, but if he should run, one thing that has come up already and surely would get a lot of attention in the news coverage – and late-night commentaries – would be his girth.
Christie himself has often acknowledged that his weight is a result of his eating habits and that it is unhealthy.
In the world we live in, it is also a potential liability from the aesthetic point of view.
There already have been stories speculating as to whether a man of Christie’s size can be elected president – kind of a diss on the intelligence of the body politic.
In fact, that question has already been answered twice by the elections of William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland.
Taft, the largest president so far, was six feet tall and weighed more than 330 pounds when he was elected president in 1908. After Taft had left the presidency, he lost about 80 pounds, which lowered his blood pressure and improved his ability to sleep.
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
Cleveland – whose weight isn’t mentioned as frequently as Taft’s – was five-feet-eleven and weighed between 235 and 280 pounds. His weight is noticeable in photographs from his presidential years, but it apparently didn’t trouble the citizens who gave him the majority of the popular vote three times in a row – the only president besides Franklin Roosevelt to achieve that. (In 1888, Benjamin Harrison won the majority of the electoral votes.)
The criticism directed at political candidates in the 19th and early 20th centuries could be as cruel, in its own way, as the attacks that are leveled today. Cartoonists gleefully exploited the proportions of both Cleveland and Taft, and no one’s physical appearance attracted more public ridicule than that of Abraham Lincoln.
But the pervasive and relentless nature of media in our age add a lot of destructive power to negative messages.
Some voters might be legitimately concerned about the life-threatening nature of Christie’s weight, but the web of electronic communications has given people the idea that they can – and should – say virtually anything that comes into their heads. The comments posted on web sites suggest that many writers think it’s a virtue to be as coarse and demeaning as they can.
I noticed, for instance, that folks who frequent a Facebook page for graduates of my high school alma mater, say some pretty awful things about former teachers and classmates – undaunted by the fact that most of their targets are still living and could easily read these messages.
For his own well-being – particularly if he takes on the rigors of a presidential campaign and a term or two in the White House – Christie ought to do something about his weight.
Besides prolonging his life, it would spare him and his family the meanness that has become the lingua franca of smart alecs in the digital age.
Woodrow Wilson with his predecessor, William Howard Taft, shortly before Wilson was inaugurated as the 28th president. In 1921, the 29th president, Warren G. Harding, appointed a slimmer Taft chief justice of the United States. Taft is the only person to have held both offices.
“Some day my prince will come” — Larry Morey
February 6, 2010
BARACK OBAMA
It’s not that I don’t like ritual – I’m a Catholic, for heaven’s sake. And I can never be distracted when the managers exchange lineup cards before a baseball game. But there can be too much of a good thing, and the State of the Union speech is an example of that.
Every year I am disappointed after hoping that some president — I’ve been waiting since Franklin Roosevelt’s last term — will talk some sense into us. Every year I hope to see the sergeant -at-arms announce the president, and the president come in from the wings instead of striding down the center aisle as though he were George Clooney on yet another red carpet and Carrie Ann Inaba were waiting to gush all over his silk suit.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
The speech isn’t even necessary. The Constitution doesn’t require it; it only calls on the president “from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
After George Washington and John Adams established the precedent of strutting into Congress to give that “information,” Thomas Jefferson discontinued the practice, and it wasn’t revived until Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Presidents in the meantime sent only written messages. The republic survived the hiatus.
WOODROW WILSON
I’ll probably still be alive in 2013. Maybe the man or woman who takes office that January will quiet the Members and speak as follows: “Let’s try this. Don’t applaud again until I’ve said, ‘And God bless the United States of America,’ and don’t get out of your chair again unless you have to use the bathroom.”
I realize that this would put a burden on the commentators who analyze the “state of the union” by the pattern of standing O’s, but maybe that challenge would make them better journalists.
I’m a little late in getting to this, but I wanted it on the record. And, hey, Irving Kahal, “I can dream, can’t I?”
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