If Chris Christie was striving for flawless excellence in his announcement speech, he succeeded. It was perfectly awful. I haven't been so bored since a Kansas City Chiefs playoff game.
Here is a man, as Christie told and demonstrated it, who rose from humble origins to extraordinary heights of insufferable pomposity. And that was just the beginning of his predictable, yawning ironies. He is now also the man, he tells us, who has gone from being a "sit-down-and-shut-up" kind of brute to being a skilled practitioner of salon chat and subtle persuasion. Perhaps the most magnificent irony came when Christie proclaimed that he's the one man who can alleviate national anxiety.
Ponder that one for a moment.
And of course we all know how he'd do as president whatever it was he said he'd do. He'd do it by — Leadership!
I find it helpful to compare presidential potential with past presidential performance, based on personality. When I set my mind to this task in the case of Chris Christie, the first presidential name that sprang up was that of John Tyler, who for years has been ranked by political historians at the George W. Bush level. Tyler left the White House despised by everyone, having alienated all.
Think of coarse sandpaper, and you have conceived the Tylerian personality. Or, you can watch Christie's announcement, already floating somewhere, I'm sure, in the cloaca of YouTube.