New Jersey Governor Chris Christie formally unveiled his presidential campaign today in a grandiose speech that did not reflect the real man we've come to know over the past several years.
Christie's campaign slogan is "telling it like it is," but he did not tell it like it is in his campaign debut.
"As a candidate for president, I want to promise you just a few things. First: a campaign without spin," he said. "You're going to get what I think, whether you like it or not, or whether it makes you cringe every once in a while or not."
"I'm going to give the answer to the question that's asked, not the answer that my consultants told me to give back stage. A campaign that every day will not worry about what is popular, but what is right. Because what is right is what will fix America — not what's popular," he said. "All the signs say, 'Telling It Like Is.' But there's a reason for that."
To say that you will run a campaign "without spin" actually is spin.
Christie's speech was loaded with spin, from his claims of fealty to bipartisanship to his independent bona fides, but there were at least a few genuine things included in his debut.
It's true that Christie does not need to worry about what is popular because he's already unpopular. Christie is a long-shot candidate whose only chance of cracking the top 10 list of candidates who will be invited to participate in primary debates is by throwing shit at the wall and waiting to see what sticks.
It's also undoubtedly true that Christie is not personally worried about popularity. Someone who's concerned about their popularity would not include a call for privatizing social security in their debut.
We can expect to see Christie toss out many similar, terrible ideas which certain members of the political press will praise as deadly serious, tough choices that only a super serious man like Chris Christie could make.