So, I’m really trying not to spend too much ink or emotional energy on this one, but …
Yesterday, it was widely reported that New Jersey governor Chris Christie was asked by an 11-year-old boy on the campaign trail what he’d do about school food if he were elected president. According to CBS News, the boy nicely teed up the question for Christie with: “[School meals] were fine when Mrs. Bush was the First Lady but now that Mrs. Obama is the First Lady they have gone down.” And of course Christie responded exactly as one would expect a Republican presidential candidate to respond: by railing against the First Lady for her vocal support of healthier school meal standards.
ABC News quotes Christie as saying, “The first lady has no business being involved in this.” CBS News says he added, “If she wants to give her opinions about what people should have for breakfast or lunch or dinner, she is like any other American, she can give her opinion. But using the government to mandate her point of view on what people should be eating everyday is none of her business.” CBS then offered this truly priceless summation of the views of the assembled crowd: “Others in the room agreed with [the boy] and Christie that the government should stay out of school lunches.”
People, when you say “government should stay out of school lunches,” you sound exactly like the guy who’s been endlessly mocked for yelling, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”
Thirty-one million school lunches a day are served via a federal program. A government nanny is already cooking your kid’s meal. So when Christie told the boy yesterday, “”I don’t care what you’re eating for lunch every day. I really don’t. I want you to eat whatever your mother wants you to eat and your father want you to eat,” I’m trying hard to understand the alternate system he’s proposing. Nutrition standards set by PTA vote? No standards at all?
Whatever he has in mind, it’s hard to listen to this obvious campaign pandering without thinking of Christie’s own longtime struggle with obesity, which has been so intractable that he reportedly underwent a secret gastric bypass in 2013. Normally I’d hesitate to even bring this up, as it might be seen as straying into ad hominem territory, but Christie himself once linked his weight problems with school food reform.
Kudos to CBS News for digging up this 2011 quote he gave to The Telegraph, in which he expressly supported Michelle Obama’s school food reform efforts:
Christie said it is “a really good goal to get kids to eat better.” He added, “I’ve struggled with my weight for 30 years. And it’s a struggle. And if a kid can avoid that in his adult years or her adult years, more power to them. And I think the first lady is speaking out well.”
But in a presidential election season, that’s all ancient history. We’re not supposed to remember anything about Chris Christie circa 2011, because then we’d have to reconcile his current campaign bluster with many other now-inconvenient positions, like his former, much-praised tolerance for Muslims, his support of gun regulation and his championing of women’s reproductive rights.
I guess caring about kids’ health is another position that just won’t fly in an election year.
[Hat tip to Casey Hinds of US Healthy Kids for alerting me to the Christie statements. And be sure to check out the Related Posts below for many, MANY prior discussions of school food reform and the political divide.]
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Dana Woldow says
One obvious question comes to mind here. An 11 year old boy said, “[School lunches] were fine when Mrs. Bush was the First Lady but now that Mrs. Obama is the First Lady they have gone down.” But Laura Bush stopped being First Lady 7 years ago, when this child was 4. He would not even have started Kindergarten then, so how does he know the school lunches were like back then?
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Oooh. Very good catch. The whole question sounded so staged and pat for an 11-year-old boy, and I think you’ve pretty much proven it was crafted for him by someone else.
Dana Woldow says
Yes, and whoever wrote the boy’s response for him seemed to overlook the fact that citing Laura Bush would raise some interesting issues, because in this same Iowa speech, Christie told folks “I think that this intervention into our school system is just another example of how the Obamas believe that they’ve got a better answer for everything than you do,” according to the CBS article you cite.
I guess Christie and his handlers have all forgotten how as First Lady, Laura Bush (a former elementary school teacher) made education her priority, promoting issues like recruitment of more highly qualified teachers and testifying before the Senate Education Committee to ask for higher salaries for teachers and better training for Head Start programs.
So how is it okay for Laura Bush to intervene in our school system but not Michelle Obama? Oh wait – I forgot – apparently only Republican First ladies are allowed to get involved in issues that help children.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
TOTALLY. In this piece from 2010, I wrote of right wing hostility to Michelle O’s efforts: “Absent pre-existing political animus toward the Obamas (which of course is at work here), that view seems about as rational to me as attacking former First Lady Laura Bush for “meddling in my child’s education” or Lady Bird Johnson for “thinking she can tell us what flowers to plant on our highways.”
bw1 says
Both those other attacks are rational, however. The First Lady does not campaign for, nor is she elected to, any official office with policy setting authority. We don’t hear about her policy positions during the campaign.
The proper role for the spouses of heads of nations was demonstrated by Dennis Thatcher. He had his own job, outside of the British government, and didn’t meddle in national policy.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Thanks for your comment.
carla trankler says
school lunches should not be up to the first lady,what was wrong with the one we had,alot of kids that are obese can be because they set in front of tv,computers,games,so set limits on those not so much what they eat.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Carla: While Mrs. Obama lent her voice to improved meal standards, it’s important to remember that those standards were actually commissioned by George W. Bush and they were determined by the non-partisan Institute of Medicine. In other words, it’s not like Mrs. Obama sat around her office and came up with ideas on what to feed kids. Instead, once the IOM issued its science-based recommendations for what would best support the longterm health of America’s children, she admirably lent her support to getting those standards adopted.
Bri says
What adult pushed the 11-year-old to phrase the question that way? I mean, I’m not a math expert, but when Laura Bush was First Lady that kid wasn’t old enough to eat school meals. Of course, there’s the outside chance that he attended some public school-funded Pre-K program with mandatory lunch participation, I guess…but I still call b.s.! That was a kid parroting something he heard or was encouraged to say by adults with an agenda. As for Christie…well, I’m just going to leave it there. 😉
Bettina Elias Siegel says
You and Dana think alike – see above! I wish I’d caught that, too, and put it in the post.
bw1 says
“So when Christie told the boy yesterday, “”I don’t care what you’re eating for lunch every day. I really don’t. I want you to eat whatever your mother wants you to eat and your father want you to eat,” I’m trying hard to understand the alternate system he’s proposing.”
It’s not hard to understand – local control has long been a plank of his party’s platform.
“Nutrition standards set by PTA vote?”
Actually, that’s a great idea, and not just for lunches. Make public schools directly accountable to their CUSTOMERS, just like private schools are. Isn’t your entire cause an extension of your desire, as a parent, to influence what your child eats at school? Why then, for a community hundreds of miles from you where the parents want something different, do you militate for a system that would deny them that which you seek for yourself? Why this burning need for a one-size-fits-all top down imposition of orthodoxy?
Bettina Elias Siegel says
That’s an interesting perspective. Thanks for your comment here.
mommm!!! says
Because the PTA doesn’t fund school lunches. The government does, which I’m fundamentally against. But that is a whole OTHER conversation.
Em says
To mommm!!!: Why? Do you know, in the year 2016, 1 in 4 children are food insecure in the U.S.? (To be food insecure means not knowing when or how one will get their next meal.) And for some reason you’re fundamentally against the government from feeding American children? You want to punish the children for whatever financial situation they’re in, which they have no control over as children, and take away possibly the one meal they are guaranteed to have per day (weekdays only, since this is school lunch)? If my taxes are going to give children the basic human right to EAT, then take my money.
bw1 says
Em, where does the nannystate stop? Where do people become responsible for themselves? We currently have government feeding, clothing, sheltering, and even entertaining people.
“And for some reason you’re fundamentally against the government [from] feeding American children?”
Yes, because feeding, clothing, and sheltering children is the responsibility of their parents. For 50 years now, we’ve had “Great Society” programs covering peoples’ poor choices to have children they are not prepared to support, and all it’s accomplished is turning illegitimacy and irresponsible parenting into a growth industry.
I have no problem with voluntarily donating to private charities, which are free to require behavorial change as a condition of their assistance.
“If my taxes are going to give children the basic human right to EAT, then take my money.”
That’s YOUR choice – it doesn’t entitle you to force others to participate. Find a charity you believe in and contribute, rather than asking the government to coerce EVERYONE into funding an entirely unaccountable one-size-fits-all solution.