Mike Kinsley and Eugene Robinson are getting lots of pushback for arguing yes. Here's Chait:
Why does his weight matter at all? The only real reasoning I see here is that American elites view obesity with disgust, and they’re repulsed at the notion that a very fat guy could rise to a position of symbolic leadership. It’s not a very attractive sentiment.
McArdle nods. Ta-Nehisi steps back:
It's not so much that Eugene Robinson, or Michael Kinsley are being intrusive. It's that they're being rude. And their rudeness has targets beyond Chris Christie. The last thing people–and really kids–who are struggling with this need is columnists yoking the megaphone telling them how simple it would be for them to be in "optimal health." I don't grasp any great understanding of the science of hunger and weight from either of those columns.
Paul Campos believes Christie's extra pounds could actually help him electorally:
In the context of contemporary American politics, an unapologetically fat body, at least a fat male body (again, it should be obvious that putting 50 pounds on Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin would instantly destroy their presidential aspirations), could well function as a kind of symbolic flipping off of the endlessly intrusive nanny state, so despised by both libertarians and cultural conservatives.
Ezra Klein says extra weight, in and of itself, doesn't cut life expectancy much. He insists that "there’s no real reason to think that Christie isn’t up to the job of being president, or that he’s at a particularly high risk of keeling over should he take office." Klein's piety is a little much. The fact of the matter seems to me to be quite simple. Presidents in the modern age are increasingly required to look presidential. No baldies or beards, for example, since Eisenhower and some dude in the nineteenth century. Perry and Romney are almost made in a presidential Ken factory – and both presumably dye their hair (as, obviously, did Reagan). Looks, in other words, matter on an unconscious level in a president. We respond to these signals before our frontal cortexes kick in.
And so fatness – which, in Christie's case is better termed obesity – really depends on the eyes of the voters. It shouldn't, but it does. We can argue about it, but we cannot truly defeat it. The question is whether a man who truly looks like much of America in 2011 can be president. I think we may be surprised by the answer.
(Photo: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie listens to a question at a Reform Agenda Town Hall meeting at the New Jersey Manufacturers Company facility March 29, 2011 in Hammonton, New Jersey. By Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)
The Dish 