Let's get this out of the way right at the start. This is not a column about Chris Christie's substantive virtues as a presidential candidate, nor is it intended to tout him for same - so you don't need to barrage me in the comments section with "Christie's a RINO!" or "He embraced that Muslim Obama!" or any of that stuff. Many of you will anyway, but it's entirely beside the point.
This is strictly about the irrelevant trivia that we apparently allow to enter into our thinking when we decide who to support for president and other offices, although I'm also questioning who really makes this an issue and whether normal people really care. Supposedly Christie has bought himself some political trouble by very publicly embracing Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and rooting unashamedly for the Cowboys. The issue, I guess, is that one supposed strength for Christie in a presidential run would be his ability to get votes in the largely blue northeast, and dammit, those people are Giants fans! (There might be six or seven Jets fans too, but who cares?)
Why Christie likes the Cowboys, I have no idea. Maybe he doesn't but he likes sitting in Jerry Jones's luxury box and he likes going to Texas for free when it's butt cold in New Jersey. I don't really care, but apparently the political punditocracy seems to think a lot of you will:
Any hopes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might have had about home-state controversies fading into the past now seem dashed by a new, Texas-sized headache.
Christie, a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, is facing criticism about him and family members attending several Dallas Cowboy football games as a guest of team owner Jerry Jones.
Beyond ethics questions about an elected official accepting free tickets, New Jersey residents are giving Christie a giant raspberry for rooting against local favorites the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants, who play home games in the Garden State.
So if the pundits are to be believed, people who would otherwise have seen Christie as the man to go to the Oval Office and solve the nation's problems are now going thumbs-down on that proposition because he roots for the wrong football team. There are certainly some serious reasons to be skeptical about Christie as a prospective president, but is this really one of them? And more to the point, are people really thinking this? Or are the media thinking it and projecting it onto the electorate?
The guess here is that it's the latter. It's the shallow, stupid media, not normal people, who obsess over "optics". The average person might see the image of Christie in the box with Jerry Jones and think, "Huh, I wonder why he likes the Cowboys," and then shrug and never give it another thought - certainly not in the realm of changing a voting preference. I wanted Christie to be president, but after this, I'm ready for Hillary!
Seriously? No.
The more likely scenario is that the punditocracy jumps all over the narrative and goes around asking people what they think, then runs with the predictable answers. A Cowboys fan? You kidding me? Hugging Jerry Jones? Clown move, bro!
It only becomes a political consideration when the media decide to introduce it into the political narrative. Until that point, it's strictly trivia.
By the way, I can relate to someone who lives in one place and roots for a football team from a different place. I've been a Vikings fan since I was 8, despite being from Detroit, and I'm convinced that Teddy Bridgewater now gives us the quarterback we need to lead us to that long-elusive Super Bowl title! I root for Detroit teams in every other sport (granted, that's only two, since I don't really consider ice skating with a stick in your hands to be a sport), and my Detroit friends are invariably appalled at my football apostasy. But we manage our way through it.
Another point: I haven't exactly chosen a presidential candidate for 2016, but many of you know the one who's got my closest attention is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, for reasons I've outlined in other columns and will surely come back to frequently. Now, since you know I'm a Vikings fan, you might be able to figure out that I have absolutely no use for that certain team that plays in a backwards village in northern Wisconsin on the banks of Lake Michigan - a team whose name I will not utter here because we do not allow inappropriate language on HermanCain.com. Gov. Walker loves this team. This is not is mark in his favor with me. In fact, it's about as far from that as a thing can be.
But I still think he'd make a good president. In fact, the thought of him calling the Vikings' locker room to congratulate them after that Super Bowl win I mentioned makes the thought of him as president all the more appealing. So come on. There are a lot of reasons not to want Chris Christie as president, but his football preference? Seriously, this is made up by the media, right? You normal people don't really care, do you?
I want to believe in you.
