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<div class="">August 7, 2013</div>
<h1>Loud Is a Losing Proposition</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by GAIL COLLINS"><span>GAIL COLLINS</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
Let’s talk about Gov. Chris Christie. Everybody is; he’s the politician
of the hour. At the top of the latest poll of likely Republican
presidential primary voters in New Hampshire. (Just two-and-a-half years
to go until the Iowa caucuses!) </p>
<p>
If he winds up running, it could be a fantastic test of my theory that women won’t vote for men who yell. </p>
<p>
We don’t need to have a discussion about whether or not Christie is a
yeller, right? You just have to call up that video of him pursuing a
heckler down the boardwalk, waving an ice cream cone. And while Christie
is probably not any more in love with himself than your average major
league politician, he is a little less good about concealing it. Dan
Balz of The Washington Post interviewed him for the newly released book,
“Collision 2012,” in which Christie happily recounts the way the rich
and powerful begged him to run for the White House. (Henry Kissinger,
the governor reported, told him: “Being a successful president is about
two things, courage and character: You have both, and your country needs
you.”) </p>
<p>
Also, we all remember the Christie keynote speech at the Republican
convention, in which he told the crowd how wonderful he had made things
in his home state and urged them to support whatshisname, who would
carry out the New Jersey agenda in Washington. (Before which, Balz
reports, the governor had a meltdown over plans to cut his introductory
video in the interest of time and threatened to either walk away or go
onstage and say the world’s most popular obscenity on live TV.) </p>
<p>
On the other hand, he really, really likes Bruce Springsteen. </p>
<p>
There’s a side to Christie that reminds women of their worst boyfriends.
In his race for governor in 2009, he won male voters by a wide margin.
But women went for his opponent, Gov. Jon Corzine, 50 percent to 45
percent. <span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><b>This is a particularly startling figure when you add in the
fact that Corzine had the personal warmth and communication skills of an
unconscious flounder. </b></span></p>
<p>
Democrats were eyeing that gender gap when they chose Barbara Buono, a
state senator, and Milly Silva, a labor leader, to run for governor and
lieutenant governor this fall. They’re bucking long odds. Christie’s
record has a lot of weak spots, but he was terrific when it came to the
cardinal rule in politics, which is to show up for bad weather. Voters
never forget good behavior in a storm, and Christie was pretty near
pitch-perfect during Hurricane Sandy. </p>
<p>
But let’s get back to that infant race for the Republican presidential
nomination. The WMUR Granite State Poll, which had Christie on top in
New Hampshire, put Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in second. So it was
kind of fascinating last week when they got into a fight, carried out
long-distance at top volume. </p>
<p>
Christie started it, when he laced into a “strain of libertarianism”
that he termed “very dangerous” to national security. This was a garbled
broadside against Paul’s recent campaign against the government’s mass
collection of phone and e-mail records. “I want them to come to New
Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans (of 9/11) and have
that conversation,” he concluded. </p>
<p>
Terrible opening. You cannot win a serious argument by bopping your
opponent with the widows and orphans of 9/11. That was a tactic
well-honed by Rudy Giuliani, a person whose race for the presidency will
be forever remembered in the annals of totally disastrous political
campaigns. </p>
<p>
Senator Paul, in response, trotted off to Fox News and announced that if
Christie “cared about protecting this country maybe he wouldn’t be in
this gimme, gimme, gimme.” <em>His</em> garbled broadside was a
suggestion that by demanding so much money for hurricane relief,
Christie was depriving the country of funds for national defense.
</p>
<p>
Double error! First of all, you do not mess with weather-related
disasters. Also, Paul left the door wide open for Christie’s next
retort, which was to point out that New Jersey gets 61 cents back for
every $1 its residents send to Washington, while Kentucky gets back
$1.51. </p>
<p>
So, in the battle for the incoherent defense of the indefensible,
Christie won Round 2. There was further sniping, during which Paul
called the governor “king of bacon,” then made a peace offering that
Christie swatted down. (“I don’t really have time for that.”) And then
life moved on. </p>
<p>
In the end, the governor scored points only when the Yelling Guy was
replaced by the rational politician with an actual point to make. What
if it turns out that the most celebrated aspect of Chris Christie — his
high-decibel tough-talking — is really his biggest handicap as a
national candidate? </p>
<p>
In that New Hampshire poll, Christie got 27 percent of the male vote and
14 percent of the women. All the other candidates mentioned were pretty
much gender gapless. It’s just one little poll, but maybe we’re onto
something. Maybe quiet and sane trumps loud and crazy, even in
Republican primary politics. </p>
<p>
Could be the start of something soft-spoken. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
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