"Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes away."
- Mark Twain (also attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins, past president of the University of Chicago, and others)
As I have already observed (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/david-brooks-movement-on-right.html ), given Americans' love of the open highway, Chris Christie is Republican roadkill. He will never walk through the door of the Oval Office, and he is too obese to climb up a ladder and squeeze through one of its windows in the dead of night.
But heck, Gail Collins, founder of the Bonbon School of Journalism, has again happened upon fresh meat, upon which she can gorge without having to budge from her living room sofa. After taking a huge bite of Christie on Thursday (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/gail-collins-bridge-over-troubled.html), she is again back for a second helping in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Imagining President Christie" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/opinion/imagining-president-christie.html?_r=0).
Early on in her opinion piece, Collins pokes fun at Christie for employing a personal trainer:
"I must admit that I had a mixed reaction to the revelation about the trainer. Good for him on the healthy life front. But there really was something seductive about the idea of a chief executive without a physical fitness regimen."
Something "seductive" about a president without a physical fitness regimen? Kind of reminds me of the dialogue from the 1969 comedy "Putney Swope," in which a woman tells Putney that he is her biggest fantasy, whereupon Putney replies, "Just don't send me the laundry bill."
Regarding Christie's two-hour press conference intended to explain away personal responsibility for the Fort Lee traffic snarl, Collins concludes:
"The most fascinating part of the governor’s talkathon was his explanation of what he did when he discovered — just as he was toweling down from a workout — that his deputy chief of staff had been involved in creating the bridge crisis.
Christie claimed he swiftly axed said aide, wasting no time in attempting to find out why she had done it, who she had conspired with, or why she imagined he would think it was a good idea.
'I’m telling you that when I ask for an answer from a member of my staff and they lie ... they’re gone. So I never had to get to the conduct, the underlying conduct,' he said.
What do you think about that, people? Andrew Jackson-like decisiveness? Seems more like a really eerie lack of curiosity.
But then we have had presidents who were less inquisitive than a sidewalk. Look at George W. Bush. And he got elected twice."
Ah, yes, presidents who are "less inquisitive than a sidewalk." I imagine that includes a certain president who "checked in with his military team early on during the [Benghazi] attack, then checked out for the rest of the night" (see: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/11/now-know-president-obama-was-mia-on-benghazi/), or who learned like the rest of us via the newspapers about the IRS and NSA scandals.
And yes, Obama also got elected twice.
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