It's been revealed that New Jersey governor Chris Christie recently had lap band surgery. Good for him. I'm amused that pundits are discussing this only as a sign that he has designs on the White House. I mean, what other reason could a morbidly obese man have for deciding to lose weight?
If reports are correct, he had a less-intrusive procedure than the one I had in 2006. For those of you scoring at home, he seems to have weighed about the same as I did at my peak though he's reportedly 5'11" and I'm 6'3". He's always said that his cholesterol and other vital signs were "surprisingly good" for a man of his heft and that was true of me, as well. One of the reasons I believe the surgery went so smoothly for me was that, girth aside, I was in pretty good shape. My wise, all-knowing physician suggested the procedure to me and said, "If you do it when you're this fit, it'll be a breeze. If you wait ten years until you're doing it to save your life, there will be complications."
He did not recommend this surgery (or even the kind Christie had) to all or even most of his overweight patients and I do not recommend anything more to people than that they look into it. My doctor just thought it was a good fit for me and he also could place me with an excellent surgeon. He said, "I might talk you out of it if this guy wasn't available. There are a lot of people performing this procedure who shouldn't." At the time, the surgeon had a two-year wait list but he owed my doctor a favor and I was able to "cut in line," so to speak. Remind me one of these days to tell you the story of how a joke I cracked in front of the surgeon made him decide to move me up.
My weight has gone up and down and continues to fluctuate for reasons that seem to have little to do with what I ingest. I have two sizes of pants in my closet and the larger is six sizes below the biggest trousers I ever wore. Shirts are more confusing because in the world of Big and Tall, no one knows what a shirt size is if it has an "X" in it. I have 3X shirts that are snug on me and 2X shirts that are too big…and don't get me started on "2X Tall" versus "3X Tall" because to some manufacturers, the "Tall" part just means longer shirt tails and to some it means sleeves that presume the garment will be worn by an orangutan. I try to buy shirts now by actual numerical sleeve lengths and collar sizes.
If Governor Christie's lap band does lead to a presidential run, I don't know how I feel about that. I thought his willingness to embrace and praise President Obama during recent hurricane damage showed a political courage we don't see often these days. Some Republicans still regard it as the action of a traitor and I'm a little puzzled as to what they expected him to do. Presumably, Christie did believe Obama was of enormous help to the state and did deliver on all promises. Do Christie's detractors think he should have lied and said otherwise? I guess they think he was too effusive, which is another way of saying, "too honest."
With gestures like that and the fact that the guy comes across as sincere and funny in interviews — and that he has the angrier kind of conservatives calling him a "RINO" — you might forget Christie ain't all that moderate on some issues. Still, if he ever goes for the Republican nomination, he's going to have to pull a Romney and track way over to the right, over near where John McCain decided he had to be. So his current stances may not have much to do with the Chris Christie who might someday appear on my presidential ballot. I mean, he seems at times to be a Republican I could imagine myself voting for…but so did McCain and Romney before they got near their nominations. It might come down to a question of whether it was possible to elect him without turning the country over to Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan.