A loud, big guy they want for President

Tony Soprano look-alike Chris Christie spurns all calls to take on Barack Obama. Photo / AP

Back in October 2009, critics wondered if a fat man could defy the hysteria about obesity and be elected governor of a major American state.

Well, New Jersey's voters did put Chris Christie in charge and not a bit of bodymass appears to have melted from his 127kg-plus frame.

Yet today he's arguably the most popular Republican in the land, and the one his party would most like to see carrying its standard against President Barack Obama in 2012.

Only problem is, he swears he won't.

The Chris Christie show, in Washington last week, addressed leading conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.

For an hour, barely looking at a note, he held the sell-out audience in the palm of his ample hand.

His message was this. Since January 2010, he had told voters in his largely Democratic state the unpleasant truth about the financial crisis it faced, and was now taking painful measures to right it. New Jersey's problems, he argued, were those of the United States writ small.

If the Government kept ducking the tough questions on the budget deficit, then God help America. For the Chinese and the bond markets most certainly would not.

But how has a hugely overweight man, who's held political office for only two years, become the rave of the Republican Party?

According to a Zogby poll last month, he's the only Republican who beats Obama in a putative 2012 match-up. No wonder his party is begging him to become a candidate. But he'll have none of it.

"I see the opportunity, I see it, but that's not the reason to run," he said.

He simply was not ready: "What do I have to do, short of suicide, to convince people I'm not running?"

However, even this Sherman-esque refusal may not quench his party's yearning. For Christie is a man whose hour may have come.

Americans are wont to elect new Presidents as unlike their predecessors as possible: and what could be more different from the cool, professorial (and decidedly svelte) Barack Obama than a blunt, in-your-face guy from "Noo Joisey", with a belly to prop up any bar?

Before he became Governor, Christie was a federal prosecutor with a record of fighting corruption and the mob.

He exudes "Jersey attitude" as befits a native of a streetwise, unlovely state whose other famous sons include Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, not to mention the fictional Tony Soprano.

Yet he's a natural speaker, with the politician's gift of making listeners feel he's talking only to them. But there are more basic reasons why Christie is the talk of his party.

One is its dissatisfaction at the choices on offer. Mitt Romney? Looks the part, but a pandering flip-flopper. Mike Huckabee? A lightweight. Tim Pawlenty? Never heard of him. Ditto John Thune. Newt Gingrich? An unguided missile. Jeb Bush? Terrific, but with that surname, no way. Sarah Palin? A star, but she's unelectable.

Even more important, Christie not only talks the Republican talk, he pretty much walks the walk.

From Obama and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke down, everyone warns of the desperate need to rein in the deficit, but not much is happening.

But this could be a messy political northern spring.

Forget the President's financial 2012 Budget proposals unveiled last week.

Deadlock between the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate over the current year's Budget, presented 12 months ago but still not passed, could lead to the first federal Government shutdown since 1995.

In the states, many of them near bankruptcy, similar crises have already exploded.

Over 25,000 people protested in Wisconsin at the Republican governor's plans to slash pensions and healthcare benefits of public workers, exactly the issues at stake in the national debate over social security and the Government's Medicare and Medicaid programmes.

Similar turmoil could happen in other cash-strapped states such as Ohio, Missouri and New Jersey.

Christie's Democratic predecessor vowed to sleep in his office until a Budget deal was reached.

Not this Governor. In a riff that could have been delivered at the Sopranos' kitchen table, he warned New Jersey Democrats: "You close down this Government, I'm goin' back to the governor's residence, gonna get a beer, order a pizza, watch the Mets. And when you decide to reopen, gimme a call and I'll come back, but I ain't sleeping on a cot."

Chris Christie may not be a candidate, but when Republicans hold their convention in Florida in August next year, don't bet against him delivering the most hilarious keynote speech ever.

- INDEPENDENT