“He’s A Hypocrite”: Why I Was Wrong About Chris Christie
A year ago, I wrote: “The smartest move in politics today is to move against Washington and the two major parties. And the smartest man in politics may be Chris Christie.” I take it back.
At the time, the New Jersey governor had channeled the public’s disgust with political dysfunction, chastising House Republican leaders for refusing to allow a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Christie said the game-playing that derailed the relief bill showed “why the American people hate Congress.” He accused his own party’s leadership for “selfishness,” “duplicity,” and moral failure.
His approval rating topped 70 percent.
Now his numbers are dropping, because he wasn’t so smart. Rather than stay true to his post-partisan image, Christie ran a hyper-political governor’s office that focused relentlessly on a big re-election win to position him for a 2016 presidential race. In this zero-sum gain culture, Christie enabled (if not directly ordered) an infamous abuse of power: the closure of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge in a fit of political retribution.
If not criminal, it was pretty damn stupid. His reputation is in tatters. Reporting a poll conducted jointly with ABC News, Philip Rucker and Scott Clement of the Washington Post wrote:
Christie has benefited from the perception that he has unique appeal among independents and some Democrats, a reputation the governor burnished with his 2013 reelection in his strongly Democratic state.
But that image has been tarnished, the survey finds. More Democrats now view Christie unfavorably than favorably, with independents divided. Republicans, meanwhile, have a lukewarm opinion, with 43 percent viewing him favorably and 33 percent unfavorably. Overall, 35 percent of Americans see him favorably and 40 percent unfavorably.
Christie has fallen from first to third among potential GOP presidential candidates, according to the Washington Post–ABC News poll, behind Rep. Paul Ryan and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
A plurality of respondents said the bridge episode represents a pattern of abuse in Christie’s office. While most Republicans give him the benefit of the doubt, 60 percent of Democrats and half of all independents don’t think it was an isolated incident. There is good reason for the suspicion.
First, the governor is deeply engaged in the minutia of his office, an operation that doesn’t discriminate between politics and policy. As the New York Times reported this week in a must-read analysis:
Mr. Christie has said that he had not been aware of his office’s involvement in the maneuver, and nothing has directly tied to him to it. But a close look at his operation and how intimately he was involved in it, described in interviews with dozens of people — Republican and Democrat, including current and former Christie administration officials, elected leaders and legislative aides — gives credence to the puzzlement expressed by some Republicans and many Democrats in the state, who question how a detail-obsessed governor could have been unaware of the closings or the effort over months to cover up the political motive.
In other words, how stupid do you think we are, governor? Christie either knew or should have known that his administration was snarling Fort Lee in traffic and endangering lives.
Second, the governor’s team is now under siege. Everything they’ve done and will do is cast in suspicion. Accusations that previously might have brought them a benefit of the doubt are now filtered by scandal. Like the Times story today about pressure applied to the Hoboken mayor to support a development project favored by Christie. The leverage his team used against the mayor: flood relief linked to Hurricane Sandy.
The Christie administration’s actions were little different from the game-playing of the House Republicans that drew his wrath a year ago. A politician trying to smartly distance himself from Washington can’t be a hypocrite.
Having leaned too far over my skis a year ago, I’m not prepared to write Christie’s political obituary today. But there is a growing sense of how it might read, starting with what I wrote after Christie’s mea culpa news conference Jan. 9:
While Christie said many of the right things in a lengthy and wide-ranging new conference—the contrast to President Obama’s response to 2013 controversies was unmistakable—his actions were far from dispositive. We don’t know how voters in New Jersey and beyond will assess his truthfulness. We can’t predict whether the investigations will uncover more wrongdoing. And we need to find out whether the George Washington Bridge incident is isolated, or part of a pattern of abuse.
In the three weeks since that column, polls suggest a good number of Americans doubt his veracity and wonder whether he was running a corrupt administration. Voters aren’t dumb.
By: Ron Fournier, The National Journal, January 30, 2014
“The Dawning Of Reality”: Chris Christie’s 2016 Access Lane Has Been Closed
Chris Christie was never going to be the president of the United States. That issue was settled long before gridlock set in on the lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge. The New Jersey governor’s record on the critical measures for any state executive bidding for the presidency in 2016—job creation and economic growth—were dismal, and his positions on economic and social issues were far too conservative to attract swing voters in a country that had already rejected John McCain and Mitt Romney.
What remained uncertain was whether a Republican Party that has not nominated a winning candidate with a name other than “Bush” since the 1980s would gamble on Christie. And that issue is now settled, as well.
Even before The New York Times reported on Friday that former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official David Wildstein, an old friend of the governor who gained his position with Christie’s blessing, has written a letter explaining that it was on “the Christie administration’s order” that access lanes to the bridge were closed—thus gridlocking Fort Lee, a city where the Democratic mayor had refused to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election bid—Republicans across the country were looking elsewhere.
After his re-election last fall, Christie led the Republican pack in national polls and polls from battleground states.
That’s over.
A Washington Post/ABC News survey released this week determined that Christie “appears to have suffered politically from the bridge-traffic scandal engulfing his administration.”
That’s polite newspeak for: Christie’s numbers among those most likely to support him have tanked.
In the Post poll, only 43 percent of Republicans viewed the governor favorably—not that much better than his favorable rating among Americans in general: 35 percent.
The survey found that Christie had sunk to a weak third-place position in the nomination race, with support from just 13 percent of Republican-leaning voters. The candidates who have benefitted most from the governor’s collapse—nationally known Republicans with big names and well-established histories—were soaring. Congressman Paul Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, who is looking a little more like a 2016 contender these days, was at 20 percent. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was at 18 percent.
Worse yet for Christie, his 13 percent support level was barely better than that found for Texas Senator Ted Cruz (12 percent), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (11 percent.) and Florida Senator Marco Rubio (10 percent).
There was a line of analysis that suggested Christie—who after a marathon press conference three weeks ago, in which he tried and failed to explain himself, has pretty much avoided the media—might ride the storm out and get back into contention.
But reality has to be dawning on even the most ardent Christie enthusiasts, now that Wildstein’s lawyer has released the letter claiming that “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference.”
It is far too early to say where the inquiries and investigations of the bridge scandal—and all the other scandals that have arisen in its wake—will ultimately end up. It is far too early to speak in conclusive terms about what Christie knew, or when he knew it. But it should be clear by now that the sorting out of this governor’s troubles is going to take a very long time. Christie will be fighting in that time not to restore his presidential prospects but to regain the confidence of voters in his home state. Indeed, before this is done, he could well be fighting to retain the governorship through the end of his current term.
That’s not how a candidate secures the Republican nomination for president.
And that is why the time really has come to accept that Chris Christie’s brief period as a presidential prospect is absolutely finished.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, January 31, 2014
“Media Fantasy Becoming Completely Undone”: GOP’s “Deep Bench” For 2016 Is Now In Splinters
Last time I saw former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, he was sashaying around Tampa, Fla., in 2012 as though we’d see him again, big time, in 2016. Elected with Chris Christie in that 2009 statehouse rebuke to President Obama, he’d been a rising star, tapped to make the 2010 GOP State of the Union reply and an opening night convention address in Tampa. He made sure to shake my hand as I replaced him in the shared CNBC/MSNBC makeup cubby off the convention floor. Good times. Now McDonnell’s only thoughts of 2016 are making sure he doesn’t spend it in prison, as he fights public corruption charges for taking an estimated $165,000 in gifts from a grifting donor.
Meanwhile his class of 2009 buddy Chris Christie looks at McDonnell and has to worry: the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they turn, and they are inexorably turning now for Christie – lots of them. Between the genuine George Washington Bridge retribution scandal involving his closest aides, and newer charges that his lieutenant governor threatened to use Sandy aid as payback if Hoboken’s mayor blocked a Christie donor’s development deal, the New Jersey governor is vulnerable on more fronts than McDonnell ever was, though to be fair, investigators aren’t in Christie’s kitchen – not yet, anyway.
So concern-troll Hillary Clinton all you want, Beltway pundits. You’re missing the only 2016 story that matters, and not surprisingly, it involves a lot of you. The mainstream media fantasy of a remarkably “deep bench” of 2016 contenders for the GOP was never founded in reality – but such a bench, if it ever existed, is surely in splinters today.
That “deep bench” metaphor, by the way, seems to have come directly from Mitt Romney’s V.P. vetter Beth Myers, although you had to ask, then and now: if the GOP bench was so deep, how did they wind up with Paul Ryan, who couldn’t even carry his home state of Wisconsin? (More on Ryan in a moment.)
But for now, let’s revisit that bench: It’s not just McDonnell (No. 3 on the National Journal’s 2012 “deep bench” list for 2016) and Christie (he was No. 1) who are finished. No. 2 contender Sen. Marco Rubio is, too: He made a play for the center with immigration reform, panicked and tacked right, and now he’s nobody’s top choice. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (lucky No. 7!) flamed out after telling the GOP to stop being “the stupid party,” then acting, well, stupidly, and becoming, by August of 2013, the most unpopular Republican governor in the country (and that’s saying a lot).
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz isn’t even on the list, but he deserves some attention. He came out of nowhere in 2012, but he’s already imploded spectacularly, going from a top-tier contender in early polls to far behind because of his self-promoting and nasty (not to mention extremist) brand of politics.
Sen. Rand Paul made many lists (the National Journal’s No. 6), and he still has a few admirers, especially among his father’s old fans. But Paul has proven to be a lightweight with a plagiarism problem whose one somewhat interesting attribute – his national security and foreign policy skepticism — is politically suicidal with the GOP (and most of the Democratic) establishment. He will not be the GOP nominee.
Then there’s Rep. Paul Ryan, last seen reinventing himself as a friend of the poor and a fan of Pope Francis (even if he couldn’t resist lecturing the pope for his faulty knowledge of capitalism). He plays a wonk on TV, but badly; his only contribution to the 2012 ticket was to hurt Romney. While the National Journal had Ryan at No. 5, no defeated V.P. candidate has ever become president except FDR, and no number of loving McKay Coppins profiles will ever make Paul Ryan FDR.
While we’re in Wisconsin, let’s look at Gov. Scott Walker, who’s getting a little play now that Christie is tumbling. Walker is a charisma-free Koch brothers toady who has more in common with Christie than alleged statehouse pragmatism: his own ethically challenged aides, back in Milwaukee. Three Walker associates were convicted in an earlier probe into campaign finance violations; last October, a new investigation began. Walker was named one of the nation’s “worst governors” by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He is not ready for the glare of a national campaign.
That leaves Jeb Bush (National Journal’s No. 4*). He and his brother are disliked by the Tea Party, but the former Florida governor is beloved by the GOP establishment; he could be said to embody it. But is the country ready for another Bush? His own mother says no, and his wife, Columba, is also said to be against it. And as long as pundits insist Hillary Clinton’s ties with Wall Street could hurt her in this populist era – and they could – Bush’s will do the same thing, because they’re even closer. He went to work for doomed Lehman Brothers after leaving the governor’s mansion, because apparently Bushes aren’t wealthy enough.
Then, sadly, Florida’s state and local pension funds lost $1 billion when the firm went bankrupt. Bush came in for blame, since he was also on the State Board of Administration, which invests public funds, but he insists he played no role in advising public fund administrators to use Lehman. Still, the potential conflict would get new oxygen from a national race.
So let Larry Sabato and Ron Fournier concern-troll Hillary Clinton. It’s true, she may not run, and if she runs, she may not win. But if you want to be president in 2016 — man or woman, black or white, Republican or Democrat — you’d rather be Hillary Clinton than anyone else in the world.
Especially anyone on that shattered GOP bench.
* Just in case you’re curious, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence rounded out the National Journal list.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, January 24, 2014
“The GOP’s Rising Christie Panic”: How Bad Does The GOP Need Chris Christie? Really Bad
Well, well, well, today is an interesting day: it’s Chris Christie’s re-inauguration day. It was just two weeks ago, a little more, that this was going to be a day of shimmering triumph. I was just reading this CNN dispatch, from January 6, that talks about how the governor is planning on starting his day at a black church (whose reverend presided over Whitney Houston’s funeral) and ending it at Ellis Island. There’s nary a word in it about bridges and subpoenas.
Back then, today was supposed to be the official beginning of the slow and ineluctable ascent to the White House. He didn’t have to do or prove anything in this putative second term. Lose a little weight, maybe. But otherwise, he was on the glide path to the GOP nomination, not that Rand Paul and others wouldn’t have something to say about it, but the party establishment and most of the big money all set to gather around Christie and make sure that he didn’t have to spend too much time crossing swords with the crazies.
Now? Things are a little different, aren’t they? I trust you’re enjoying the Christie panic among Republican establishment types as much as I am. That New York Times story on Sunday, with big boosters like Home Depot’s Kenneth Langone fretting publicly that he really must surround himself with better people (so it’s their fault!), combined with the cable damage-control efforts by the likes of Rudy Giuliani, really shows the extent to which the party big shots have been counting on Christie to save them.
They know deep down that there isn’t a single other figure in their party who can come within yodeling distance of 270 electoral votes. Certainly not against Hillary Clinton. Against her, the rest of them max out at around 180, which would constitute the biggest wipeout since Bill Clinton thumped Bob Dole in 1996 (379-159). Imagine Republicans waking up on Wednesday, November 9, 2016 and reading: “Not in 20 years—in fact not since her husband trounced Bob Dole in his anti-climatic reelection campaign—has a Democrat won so lopsided a victory.”
Of course Clinton might not run, and that changes the math. But if you’re a Republican, you have to assume she will. The Seahawks aren’t watching film thinking that Peyton Manning is going to be benched on Feb. 2. And Republicans know that without their man Chris, they’re finished. (I suppose there’s a Jeb Bush contingent, which pointedly does not include his mother, but recent polls show Jeb trailing Hillary almost as much as the others.) Eight more years in the wilderness.
The fact that the GOP establishment needs to come face-to-face with is that they have no one to blame for this but themselves. They’ve reached the point where they almost have to have a Northeasterner like Christie to run for president, just as they had to settle for Romney last time. They’ve let their party go so far off the deep end that practically no Republican officeholder from any other region of the country could appeal to enough moderates in enough purple and blue states to win back the territory the party ceded to the Democrats in the last two elections.
Remember: the Republicans come into the next presidential election with 206 reliable electoral votes from states their nominees have won at least four of the last six elections. The Democrats’ corresponding number is 257 (just 13 shy of the victory threshold). These tallies leave five states on the table: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada. And I’m not even sure if, with Clinton in the race, if the last three could even be called purple anymore. The Republicans have a lot of territory to reclaim.
They were, and I suppose still are, hoping that Christie could win it back for two reasons. First, and more obviously, he’d give them back the White House. But second, a Christie presidential win could paper over the profound and disturbing problems with today’s GOP. This is a party deeply in need of an internal thrashing of heads to pull it out of loony-land and back toward the center. Republican grandees know this, of course, but they’d much rather not have to go through this civil war. Indeed, the war could be cleansing enough that the party splits into two. Only Christie can save them from that possibility. The party would just become whatever Christie wanted it to be, and the Big Conversations could all be shelved.
Pretty high stakes. So the establishment isn’t going to give up on Christie easily. And of course he can enjoy the benefit in these next weeks and months of becoming a more sympathetic figure to the hard right than he’s ever been, because all he has to do to please that crowd is carry on about how the East Coast liberal media are trying to do him in. And it may just work.
But ultimately, facts are facts. And if the facts finish him off, and the GOP is stuck with Cruz-Rubio-Paul, or even a right-wing governor like Scott Walker, the establishment will be reaping what it’s spent the Obama years sowing: a party that cares more about feeding its base’s fever-dreams than being nationally electable. And that’s where things stand, as Christie begins a term that there’s a sporting chance he may not even be able to finish.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, January 21, 2014
“An Obvious Problem”: Chris Christie Needs Republicans To Have A Terrible 2014
I wouldn’t say that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the presumptive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016—though, like Ross Douthat, I’m not sure who could beat him—but it is true that he is the official candidate of the GOP establishment. And, with a reelection coalition of Republicans, Democrats, young people, Latinos, and African Americans, Christie stands as the only potential presidential nominee that can claim a credible path to victory.
It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, to learn that his rivals are already throwing shade in his direction. NBC News has a good round-up of the Republican presidential contenders who have opened fire on the New Jersey governor:
Even after the disaster of the shutdown and Ken Cuccinelli’s loss in the Virginia gubernatorial race, the operating assumption of right-wing Republicans is that success will come when conservatives take a doctrinaire approach to their ideology. The available evidence makes clear that this isn’t true—Ted Cruz, for instance, won his election, but he underperformed Romney—but this doesn’t matter to either the GOP base or lawmakers like Cruz.
This poses an obvious problem for Christie. Insofar that his message of electability has any chance of resonating with Republican primary voters, it will be because they have given up the quest for purity, and are desperate to win, which means that, for Christie, the best thing that could happen is for Republicans to have a terrible 2014. If the GOP continues down its path of extremism, and loses its shot at capturing the Senate as a result, Christie has perfect ground for making his pitch.
Unfortunately for him, the more likely outcome is that Republicans do pretty well. The combination of a sluggish economy and voter discontent will hurt incumbents, which threatens the Democratic majority in the Senate and precludes the party from making real gains in the House. And a GOP base that does well—or even okay—in next year’s midterms is one that doesn’t have much interest in Christie’s message.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, November 7, 2014
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