Corzine Attacks Opponent's Weight Issue

Talk about the politics of personal destruction.

Corzine is the sitting governor of New Jersey and this is the kind of attack he has to stoop to: It is about as subtle as a playground taunt: a television ad for Gov. Jon S. Corzine shows his challenger, Christopher J. Christie, stepping out of an S.U.V. in extreme slow motion, his extra girth moving, just as slowly, in several different directions at once.

In case viewers missed the point, a narrator snidely intones that Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid getting traffic tickets.

In the ugly New Jersey contest for governor, Mr. Corzine and Mr. Christie have traded all sorts of shots, over mothers and mammograms, loans and lying. But now, Mr. Corzine’s campaign is calling attention to his rival’s corpulence in increasingly overt ways.

Mr. Corzine’s television commercials and Web videos feature unattractive images of Mr. Christie, sometimes shot from the side or backside, highlighting his heft, jowls and double chin.

Corzine, who is physically fit, has been more and more overt about attacking Christie on his weight problem.

I am not sure why, but the race for New Jersey's governorship has been intensely personal this year. This is not good for politics and it is not good for New Jersey--and I don't even live there.