

Don't take Christie seriously

8:23 PM, Jul. 10, 2012  |  Comments
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Chris Christie, New Jersey's nattering nabob of negativism, seems to have taken a page out of Spiro Agnew's playbook in hoisting himself onto the list of potential running mates for Mitt Romney, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential candidate.

Christie, the Garden State's rough-talking governor, has been auditioning for the GOP's vice presidential slot with a tough guy act that seems to play well with the Republican base. His supporters see combativeness as a blue-collar virtue that Romney lacks - and his centrist leanings as a magnet for independent voters.

Christie's backers delight when he talks of kicking the butts of Democratic lawmakers, calls a reporter who challenged him during a news conference an "idiot," and labels an openly gay legislator a "numbnuts" for comparing Christie to segregationist governors for his position on same-sex marriage.

Agnew is the Maryland governor who catapulted himself onto the 1968 presidential ticket of Richard Nixon with tough talk of a different kind. He called a meeting of his state's moderate, black leaders following rioting that broke out in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and accused them of not doing enough to stop the violence.

These black leaders didn't act because they were "stung by insinuations (they) were Mr. Charlie's boy" and "by epithets like 'Uncle Tom'," Agnew said as television cameras rolled. That dressing down of Maryland's black leaders got Agnew national media attention and an invitation to be Nixon's running mate.

Christie is a bully of another sort. He was caught on video recently menacingly berating a man who voiced some objection to his education policy while the governor strolled along a Seaside Heights, N.J., boardwalk with an ice cream cone in hand.

"You're a real big shot, shooting your mouth off. Keep walking away. ... Keep walking," Christie can be heard calling out to the man, whom the governor pursued briefly before being gently nudged into another direction by a member of his entourage. But to actually think Christie is a real tough guy is to believe The Sopranos was a real-life documentary, not an HBO fictional drama.

Like James Gandolfini, the show's star, Christie is an actor. He baits interest in his potential candidacy with the kind of tough talk that only true bad guys, and people with a security detail, get away with. His reckless speech might play well in a state besmirched by the false imagery of The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, an MTV series that negatively stereotypes the very neighborhood where Christie had his boardwalk blowup.

It won't pass, however, on the world stage where vice presidents play an increasingly important role. In a recent interview on the ABC News show Nightline, Christie said coyly that he'd answer the phone if Romney called to ask him to be his running mate.

Let's hope that doesn't happen.

What this nation needs from both sides of the political aisle are serious men and women who will take a constructive - not a chest-beating - approach to leadership and governing. We need politicians who can proffer their ideas and defend their ideological ground without resorting to brutish behavior. This nation needs elected officials who will answer reporters' questions, or - when they choose not to - will do so with the good reasoning and civility public trust demands.

As with Agnew, Christie's selection as a vice presidential candidate would be great theater. But to put someone who delights in using fighting words so close to the Oval Office would place a blustering bully a heartbeat away from the presidency.

DeWayne Wickham is a USA TODAY columnist.

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