Chris Christie: is America ready for a fat president?

REPUBLICANS put off by the various flaws in the current field of candidates running in the party's presidential primaries are urging New Jersey governor Chris Christie to throw his hat in the ring. He's an anti-union fiscal conservative and, unlike the last great Republican hope Rick Perry, an excellent debater.

There's only one problem: some people think he might be too fat to be president.

Not everyone has been so crass. In a piece exploring the likelihood that Christie (above) would throw his hat in the ring for the Republican primaries, the Guardian's Richard Adams heroically managed to avoid the subject of the governor's corpulence, giving as the main reasons why he probably won't run as "his disavowals and the difficulties of building a national campaign team with the first primaries just four months away".

In America, they have been less chivalrous. "The governor is fat, some would say grossly obese - and there has never been an overweight president in my lifetime," writes Palash Ghosh in the International Business Times, who nonetheless admires Christie. "Taking an unscientific study, in most presidential elections of the last half-century... the taller or better-looking candidate has usually won the election."

In the country that has come to symbolise the developed world's obesity epidemic, the prospect of a Christie candidature has made him a laughing stock and offered a taste of what is to come should he actually throw his hat in the ring.

Earlier this week, David Letterman ridiculed the governor on The Late Show, saying: "You know who the Republicans want as their candidate is the tubby guy across the river, Chris Christie... You talk about tons of fun, here we go.

"I want Christie in this race because I want to be able to say, 'Hey, bring it, fat boy!'"

Christie himself has tackled his weight problem head on in the past, saying: "I weigh too much because I eat too much and I eat some bad things, too."

He has also released a statement denying his girth is a health problem: "Despite the well-chronicled issues with my weight, I've been relatively healthy by all objective indicators."

But perhaps all is not lost. Gothamist points out that some analysts believe Americans may be ready for a "plus-size president". It quotes a political scientist who says: "Maybe this is a time when you need someone to be a bull in a china shop. Well, bulls are big." ·