Chris Christie

I know this blog is going to stray slightly from the running theme I have here, but the topic seemed so interesting to me that I had to write about it. That and it is health related, so it pertains to what I would write about on here anyway. I also know that he is officially not running for president, but the question came up before he announced that yesterday. In case some of you don't know, Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey and was considered a Republican candidate for president until he officially said he wasn't running yesterday. Chris Christie also happens to be a very large man. I was listening to MPR the other day, and one of the morning radio hosts asked if you would vote for someone who was overweight or fat.
I found myself to have a very mixed view in the answer to this question. On one side, I feel like it shouldn't matter what you weigh to hold a position like president. No matter what people say there is prejudice against people who are heavy or overweight. People associate the word "fat" with other words like lazy, slob, stupid, gross, etc. This is wrong! A person who has become governor of a state is obviously not lazy. I imagine the job is very stressful and requires a lot of work. Nor is this person stupid, pretty sure you need to have some level of intelligence to run a state (Sarah Palin excluded of course). And my guess would be that you would have to dress fairly formally and look nice for all those important meetings you would have being governor and all, so therefore you would not be gross or a slob. So you see, how can someone who is fat not be qualified for this position just because they happen to have more adipose tissue than the average person? People need to get over this negative association with word fat, and look at the personality of the person rather than they way that person appears physically.
On a different note, you worry about someone's health when they are that obese. Would I worry that if he was elected president that he may have health problems associated with obesity? I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't worry. There are many different health conditions related to obesity, type II diabetes and heart disease to start. What if he suffered from a heart attack and couldn't work or even died? I know there have been presidents in the past who had health conditions and were able to keep them secret or on the down low, but you would worry if you knew about those conditions before hand. Also, President Obama is a smoker (or former smoker), and smoking can cause health problems too, hello lung cancer and high blood pressure. Did this affect the number of people that voted for him? Did people even know he smoked when they voted for him? I didn't know. I personally know people who didn't vote for John McCain  because they thought he was too old and the were worried he might die in office.
Then there is the matter of obesity in America. Would Chris Christie or any other candidate who happened to be obese be able to convince people that he or she had a plan to stop obesity in the the United States if that person is obese themselves?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that for me at least this is a complicated issue. I hate hate hate that people are judgmental and shallow when it comes to weight, but at the same time I want people to be healthy and active. I guess if he was the Republican candidate, I would pay extra attention to who his running mate was and be sure that person was capable of leading if the president became sick or died, more so than usually anyway because you should pay attention to running mates anyway. I feel like a bad person for thinking about this in the first place anyway, like I might be prejudiced and I don't like that feeling at all.