LONDON — Presidential politics can be a humbling business. Local renown is revealed, uneasily, to be just that: It translates poorly onto a bigger stage, allowing a man accustomed to instant, cell-phone-picture-frenzied celebrity on the boardwalks of the New Jersey shore to stroll in awkward anonymity through a packed stadium in London.
So it went here on Sunday for Chris Christie, a big shot bereft of an audience, in a city he professes to adore and to visit frequently.
“Who?” asked Graham Upson, a 55-year old soccer fan inside the frigid Emirates Stadium on Sunday, who seemed blissfully unaware of Mr. Christie’s presence in the stands, not to mention his very existence.
–
It turned out he had already been queried by a different reporter, asking the same question.
“You want to know,” he interrupted, “if I know who Senator Christie is, right?”