Reporters and pundits alike were swooning over the broken and contrite heart Chris Christie, New Jersey’s Republican governor, displayed during an epic two-hour press conference on Thursday. In fact, this reputed political bully humbled himself to apologize for the “abject stupidity” members of his staff and his top appointee at the NJ Port Authority engaged in last September – when they orchestrated four days of bottlenecks in Fort Lee’s access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.
Their harebrained stunt created unprecedented traffic jams, as intended. But they did not even care when Fort Lee officials complained (within hours on the first day) that it was also hindering emergency vehicles responding to 911 calls. Remarkably, perhaps feeding off their boss’s bullying style, they did it to exact revenge on Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s November re-election bid.
And they got away with it … until some Edward-Snowden character leaked incriminating text messages and emails to a local paper. When that paper, The Record, published the most titillating and damning excerpts on Wednesday (exposing their determined intent to retaliate against uncooperative NJ officials), it ignited a media firestorm. Christie clearly hoped the crocodile tears he shed during his press conference would put it out.
I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team… I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution….
(New York Times, January 9, 2014)
Never mind that he contradicted his affected humility by the proud way he threw all those implicated under the bus. But it speaks volumes about how unnerved he was/is by this scandal that he included his two-time campaign manager, Bill Stipien, among those he scarified at the altar of his political ambitions. (Imagine George W. Bush burning his political “architect” Karl Rove in this manner, just as he was planning his run for the 2000 presidential election.)
Not to mention that in all of Christie’s wailing about how “blindsided…betrayed…[and] sad” he felt, he never uttered a single word of regret about the inconvenience this stunt caused so many New Jersey residents, including many who voted for him. No doubt he’ll have ample opportunity to express his regrets now that those residents have filed a class-action suit against his Administration and him personally.
But as Shakespeare knew all too well, we can always rely on court jesters to distill the truth of any scandal in pithy, mocking fashion. True to form, here’s how comedian David Letterman cut through the media chaff on Thursday night (on his Late Show…):
[He] boldly took responsibility by blaming everybody but himself.
Indeed, as my title indicates, the real story here is not this stunt, which, quite frankly, is tame compared to the dirty tricks political operatives routinely orchestrate (like Republicans making robocalls instructing unsuspecting Democrats to show up to vote the day after Election Day). Rather it’s the way this wannabe president made a mockery of the now hallowed presidential motto, “The buck stops here,” which Harry Truman coined.
Recall that Republicans damned Obama as clueless and ineffectual for claiming he was blindsided by the glitches that made the rollout of healthcare.gov such a nightmare. Obama duly apologized and, even though he did not make a proud show of it, he fired all staffers responsible and terminated his Administration’s contract with CGI, the IT contractor behind healthcare.gov.
Yet these same Republicans are leading the chorus of those praising Christie, despite his admission that he was every bit as clueless and ineffectual in managing his closest and most trusted staffers in this case as Obama was in managing the IT personnel who botched healthcare.gov – none of whom he probably ever met.
Mind you, Democrats are just as hypocritical. Recall that they praised Obama’s Sargent Schultz’s (“I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing”) response to the NSA leaks and healthcare.gov glitches. Yet they are now damning Christie for responding in similar fashion to this Bridgegate scandal. What’s more, just as Republicans – who control the U.S. House of Representatives – have tried in vain to damage Obama with hearings on those leaks and glitches, as well as on other faux scandals like Fast and Furious and Benghazi, Democrats – who control the New Jersey legislature (and even those who control the U.S. Senate) – are raring to do the same to damage Christie.
Of course, anyone who expects fairness and objectivity in politics, reporting, and punditry these days must have been hiding under a rock for the past 25 years….
In any case, if no smoking gun contradicts Christie’s unqualified assertion that he had nothing to do with Bridgegate, I do not think it will (or should) have any impact on his presidential ambitions. Unfortunately for him, though, this will not stop crusading ideological purists in the Republican Party from using this scandal to try to disqualify him from even competing for the presidential nomination.
No doubt you recall how indignant they became in the fall of 2012 when Christie embraced Obama, literally, as part of his pragmatic efforts to secure as much federal relief for his state in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. For some inexplicable reason these partisan fools deemed Christie embracing the president of the United States even more treasonous than Snowden sharing NSA secrets with the Chinese and Russians. And they have not pardoned him.
But if these right-wing “wackobirds”/Tea Partiers were unable to stop the Mormon Romney or the Maverick McCain, there’s no reason to think they’ll be able to stop the Rhino Christie from winning the Republican nomination.