Have the looks of any presidential candidate or potential candidate ever gotten so much attention?
No, I’m not talking about Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.
I’m talking about the fatists who, as news surfaced that Chris Christie was being urged to enter the GOP presidential field, decided to weigh in on his fitness for office.
Bloomberg’s Michael Kinsley decreed that Christie was “too fat” to be president. He went on to dub the New Jersey governor a “too- perfect symbol of our country at the moment, with appetites out of control and discipline near zilch.”
Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post told him to “eat a salad and take a walk.”
Were those blunt assessments? Absolutely.
Should discussion of a candidate’s appearance drown out discussion of their stances on the issues? That’s a harder one to answer.
As much as we pretend not to be, we are superficial. We make assumptions based on appearances.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can’t open a book without touching the cover.
The first thing you notice about Christie is his girth.
And it’s fair to say that looks matter in politics. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that the higher profile the office, the more important looks are, given how often the official will be put before the public on television and in photos.
Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who reportedly dropped 30 pounds prior to his 2008 presidential campaign, says voters eventually move past it.
“While campaign consultants might think otherwise, I have learned through many years of experience that the appearance or weight of a candidate doesn’t make much of a difference,” he e-mailed in response to a query for his views on the focus on Christie’s weight. “The most important quality is whether voters like and trust you as a candidate. If you have that connection, voters tend to look past superficial qualities.”
The key idea there is making the connection. In Christie’s case, we haven’t had the chance.
• • •
Call me the muffin man.
I was among the journalists who read an inspector general’s audit of Department of Justice conference spending two weeks ago and wrote about its findings, focusing largely on the infamous $16 muffin.
Turns out, that wasn’t the whole story. After I filed that column, Hilton Worldwide released a statement, challenging the auditor’s math and noting that the receipt line item for “muffins” actually was abbreviated and included contract services and other items, such as meeting space.
“In Washington, the contracted breakfast included fresh fruit, coffee, juice, muffins, tax and gratuity, for an inclusive price of $16 per person,” the statement said.
The Justice Department, not surprisingly, sided with Hilton’s accounting, with a spokeswoman saying that “it is clear that the muffins did not cost $16.”
In a later statement in response to an inquiry from Bloomberg Businessweek, the auditors said:
“Even if the $4,200 fee (billed as ‘muffins’) included additional food and beverage items, the OIG believes, as stated in our report, that many individual food and beverage items listed on conference invoices and paid by the Department were very costly.”
So, whom do you believe?
The more I read, the more I am inclined to think that the $16 muffin charge is overstated. But to my knowledge, no one has debunked the report’s finding that DOJ conference organizers paid $8 for cups of coffee and $32 for snacks.
And you can bet that federal conference organizers and purchasers will remember the mythical $16 muffin the next time they’re shopping for breakfast.
E-mail Curtis Hubbard at chubbard@denverpost.com.
