Death and the US President
February 17th, 2013 at 10:00 am by David FarrarJack Tame writes in the HoS:
There’s more to health than just his fat, Christie retorted this week. He appeared on late night TV smashing a doughnut. Unless the doctor gives him a physical or examines his family history, Christie says Mariano should “shut up”.
But surely the doctor has a point.
It’s true Obama continues to struggle with cigarettes, and that his nicotine addiction could one day spell his end. But one need only look at Christie to know he probably risks a much more sudden departure.
If tax returns, birth certificates and religious leanings are considered fair fodder for Presidential nominees, I don’t think it entirely unreasonable for a pulse to be a prerequisite, too. Being obese might not stop a person doing the job, but being dead would be a hindrance.
David Letterman makes Chris Christie fat jokes almost non-stop, so it was hilarious when Christie went on the show and after a few minutes pulled out a donut and ate it, saying he didn’t realise how long the interview would be. People love someone who can mock themselves.
Christie’s weight and health will be issues if he stands for President. However the chance of Christie departing from office prematurely is hugely overblown by commentators such as Tame.
Paul Campos at Time writes:
In January 2017, Christie will be 54, while the current Democratic front runner for her party’s presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, will be 69. It is true that with all other things being equal, compared with normal-weight people like Clinton, very obese people like Christie have an elevated mortality risk. Specifically, the most recent, detailed and sophisticated study of the question, published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that people as heavy as Christie have a 29% increase in mortality risk vs. otherwise similar people of normal weight.
Now, 29% may sound like a significant elevation in risk, but let’s compare it with another factor, one that has a vastly more powerful effect than body weight: age.
Government actuarial tables reveal that with all other things being equal, the odds that a 69-year-old woman will die between January 2017 and January 2021 are 115% higher than the odds that a 54-year-old man will die during that four-year period. In other words, age poses almost exactly four times the mortality risk to Hillary Clinton as weight does to Chris Christie, in regard to the chances that either would die during a first presidential term.
So Clinton’s age is four times greater a mortality factor than Christie’s weight. How many pundits will write on the possibility that Clinton would die in office?
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February 17th, 2013 at 10:23 am
It’s not like the US hasn’t had big Presidents before – William Howard Taft, who once became stuck in the White House bath tub and replaced it one big enough to fit four normal sized men.
Add to that the President has probably the best healthcare plan in the world the risk is completely over-rated (and probably just another Democratic attempt to turn voters against a Republican).
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 10:35 am
Clinton will be too old to run for POTUS in my view. Anyway, you can loose weight but you can’t lose age so the ball’s in Christie’s court on that score.
But I doubt Christie will be nominated – too many Republicans mistrust him. More likely to be someone like Jeb Bush.
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 10:38 am
Lets hope Clinton never gets close enough to the Presidency for that to be an issue.
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 10:40 am
Fat or thin there are very few good politicians about and Christie is a Democrat who should be honest about it and switch sides officially.
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 10:57 am
Is John McCain dead yet?
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 11:21 am
Sounds like Jack Tame has been following Democratic talking points again.
Vote:Just like he did when Romney was campaigning for the Republicans, the wee little lefty does all he can to trash the ‘right.’
February 17th, 2013 at 11:41 am
I doubt Tame or any other pathetic boy/girl liberal lefty “reporter” would have covered the sicknesses of FDR or JFK in the same way (not saying that fat Christie is sick). But those 2 pres’ illnesses would have made them just as unliable for office.
Nicotine “addiction”. Once upon a time it was a “habit”. But the wowsers have medicalised everything these days.
Another good example is the explosion in “depression”. Unhappy people are now all “depressed”!
They then have a “right ” to sympathy and treatment. There’s even ads on TV about it. Faaaark!
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 12:03 pm
Chris Christie is another fat RINO.
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 12:17 pm
He’s been elected several times despite being obese, why would it be an issue in another election – unless the media play it up.
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
Clinton is more likely to fall over.
Vote:In fact hasn’t she been doing that already.
She’s also more at risk of getting an STD
February 17th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
He should be advised to go low carb and turn his personal weight loss journey into a positive feel good campaign that will humanise him to many and inspire the many Americans who are also overweight….win/win for him. And it snookers the left as they can’t really appear to be nasty and bagging him for it.
Vote:February 17th, 2013 at 4:58 pm
scorned – was thinking the same thing. its almost like hes waiting to announce before he starts a diet.
battling food “addiction” cant be easy!
Vote:February 18th, 2013 at 11:28 am
I doubt Christie will make the nomination the way the GOP currently runs them. All of the sane ones are gone pretty quickly. I don’t think Clinton will run either. She may run as VP but I don’t think as POTUS.
Vote:February 18th, 2013 at 11:34 am
It’s amazing how all the comments of the form I just see a lazy person who can’t be control his eating/can’t make the effort to lose weight…” are suddenly missing in action when the fatty concerned is a Republican…
Vote:February 18th, 2013 at 2:40 pm
You know one way to win an Oscar is to either lose 40kgs for a role (Tom Hanks, Christian Bale and didn’t Donnie Wahlberg win something) or gain 20kgs and go from pretty to ugly (Charlize Theron). Maybe it could work for the presidency.
What better way to signal seriousness for the presidency and demonstrate a common touch than to overcome an obvious problem and diet and exercise down to something more safe looking in the next 3.5 years.
Vote: