Loud Is a Losing Proposition

By GAIL COLLINS, NYT

Let’s talk about Gov. Chris Christie. Everybody is; he’s the politician of the hour. At the top of the latest poll of likely Republican presidential primary voters in New Hampshire. (Just two-and-a-half years to go until the Iowa caucuses!)

If he winds up running, it could be a fantastic test of my theory that women won’t vote for men who yell.

We don’t need to have a discussion about whether or not Christie is a yeller, right? You just have to call up that video of him pursuing a heckler down the boardwalk, waving an ice cream cone. And while Christie is probably not any more in love with himself than your average major league politician, he is a little less good about concealing it. Dan Balz of The Washington Post interviewed him for the newly released book, “Collision 2012,” in which Christie happily recounts the way the rich and powerful begged him to run for the White House. (Henry Kissinger, the governor reported, told him: “Being a successful president is about two things, courage and character: You have both, and your country needs you.”)

Also, we all remember the Christie keynote speech at the Republican convention, in which he told the crowd how wonderful he had made things in his home state and urged them to support whatshisname, who would carry out the New Jersey agenda in Washington. (Before which, Balz reports, the governor had a meltdown over plans to cut his introductory video in the interest of time and threatened to either walk away or go onstage and say the world’s most popular obscenity on live TV.)

(More here.)