The Round and the Oval

By FRANK BRUNI (The New York Times)

There are a great many things that Chris Christie is indeed too fat for.

Spelunking, for one. Wriggling through subterranean caverns is safest for those of a lesser circumference.

A middle seat in coach. That would be cruel to the people on the window and aisle, and some carriers might forbid it, as the movie director Kevin Smith, ejected not long ago from a Southwest Airlines flight, can roundly attest.

But the presidency? That’s ludicrous. Downgrade Christie for his truculent style. Reject him for his limited experience. But don’t dwell on his heft, at least not to the extent that many Americans have been whispering — and some are now outright saying — you should. Girth doesn’t equal character. And mettle has better measurements than the number of scoops in your post-dinner sundae or miles in your pre-breakfast run.

First off, a reality check: the New Jersey governor is not yet in the hunt for the Republican nomination, and may never be. But last week, as Christie speculation reached a fever pitch, attention to his corpulence hit critical mass, with the question changing from whether he was too overweight to win to whether he was so overweight that he didn’t deserve to.

The tone was sneering. In a column about Christie’s size in The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson noted that the governor “speaks often about the need for officials to display leadership.”

“Well, Gov. Christie, lead thyself,” Robinson wrote, later adding: “Eat a salad and take a walk.”

In a Bloomberg View column, Michael Kinsley was blunter and meaner, asserting that Christie “cannot be president: He is just too fat.”

That evaluation pertained not to Christie’s ability to seduce voters but to his character, writ in love handles and chins. They symbolized insufficient discipline, in Kinsley’s estimation, and Christie shouldn’t be granted access to the Oval Office “unless he goes on a diet and shows he can stick to it.”

Let’s talk about discipline. It’s not an attribute that carries through in a consistent, coherent fashion to all facets of a person’s life; disciplined or undisciplined behavior on one front doesn’t augur identical behavior on others. Someone can be a flawless steward of his or her physique and a wanton lunatic in all else. Ever been to Hollywood?

Discipline can also be overrated. A vegan-come-lately, President Clinton fought and often lost his struggles with diverse appetites, succumbing to a Big Mac here and a Lewinsky there, and President Obama was reportedly still sneaking cigarettes well into his 2008 campaign. He can be seen chomping on Nicorette gum to this day.

Did that or does that make either leader less suited to office than the second President Bush, who seemingly kept his midlife resolve never to touch booze again, worked out religiously, maintained an early bedtime and vacationed like clockwork at his ranch? Bush was arguably more disciplined in those arenas than his predecessor and successor combined, but discipline was entwined, as it often is, with an absolute certainty and even inflexibility. And those qualities arguably had consequences far greater than Christie’s evident gluttony might.

Let’s talk as well about that gluttony. It may say much more about his genetic allotment or early rearing than his resolve. Over recent years, there has been more and more scientific consideration of obesity as an expression largely of hereditary and environmental factors beyond a person’s ready control, and there has been evidence that one person’s fatness versus another’s thinness may to a significant extent be foreordained. It’s the eyes, not the thighs, that are windows to the soul.

No two stomachs are precisely alike, and I know whereof I speak. I was born with such a fierce, unappeasable hunger that, as a toddler, I threw screaming fits if I didn’t get, say, a third hamburger. And I grew up in a family where food was everywhere and food was love and you ate in celebratory moments and in sad ones and to stave off boredom and just because “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” or “Monday Night Football” was on.

The thinness that I managed in college didn’t reflect laudable self-control. It reflected bulimia and laxatives. My borderline obesity in my mid-30s wasn’t a sign of indolence and drift. Professionally, I was working harder and more reliably than ever.

And my sustained anguish over my waistline and tortured efforts to regulate it bespoke a kind of shallowness and vanity that I’m not looking for in politicians. It seems too prevalent among them already. I’d prefer a big fat president, governor or senator to one who’s constantly darting behind closed doors for a makeup touch-up or posing at a predetermined flattering angle for the C-Span camera. Ever been to the Capitol?

IN their columns, Robinson and Kinsley raise at least one worthy concern. The excess weight on Christie, 49, endangers his health, potentially exacerbating other ailments, like his asthma, and putting him in greater jeopardy of an array of diseases. It would be right and responsible for voters to think at least somewhat about whether a Christie presidency — or for that matter governorship — would be sidelined or shortened by illness.

But should that thinking be any more pivotal than questions about Ronald Reagan’s energy and acuity when he ran for re-election in 1984? He was 73 at the time, and John McCain was 72 when he squared off against Obama in 2008. Both men were thus more likely than their rivals to die or become incapacitated in office. But that didn’t prevent Reagan’s victory and wasn’t a principal cause of McCain’s defeat. Christie’s weight — a risk factor, not a crystal ball — shouldn’t be accorded more importance than the advanced ages of those two candidates were.

Still, it’s discussed with an entirely different kind of emotionalism and censure. That’s partly because it’s seen as changeable, as his fault, and partly because the growing prevalence of obesity throughout America has ratcheted up the country’s revulsion at, and demonizing of, obese people themselves. When I listen to the talk around me, I detect more sympathy for smokers or alcoholics than for overeaters, though the latter are in the grip of a similarly compulsive and perhaps addictive behavior, one with a twist that can make it even harder to control. It can’t be quit entirely. Cold turkey isn’t an option. Or, rather, it is, but just two slices, not four, with no mayo, on a multigrain roll. And moderation is often the trickiest adjustment of all.

Christie’s weight presents optical challenges, no doubt about it. Many voters aren’t going to want to look at him as often as they must look at a president, and they aren’t accustomed to prominent politicians of his dimensions. The last truly fat president, William Howard Taft, who weighed more than 330 pounds at his apogee, served near the start of the 20th century. There was no Bill O’Reilly, Rachel Maddow or David Letterman — who makes ceaseless, merciless sport of Christie’s contours — during those blinder, gentler times.

Christie could figure out some way to drop scores of pounds, as Mike Huckabee got lavish praise for doing before his presidential bid. But did you see Huckabee when he provided TV commentary at the Iowa straw poll in August? What’s lost can often be regained; the physical is less permanent than the spiritual. That’s why we should focus less on it.

Would I advise Christie to eat a salad? Sure. I’m trying to eat more of them myself. But it’s Robinson, Kinsley and the rest of the fat police whom I’d like to see take a walk.