Bridge jam may toast US governor
The Republicans’ most electable contender has just gone a bridge too far to win the 2016 United States presidency, writes Andrew Sullivan.
It is hard at this point not to see the Republicans’ most electable future presidential candidate in 2016, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, as a very large slice of walking toast. He has always been something of an appealing ogre and I had put myself in the class of not quite knowing what to make of the guy.
On the one hand he comes across as a no- nonsense, brawling, morbidly obese scrapper – the kind of chief executive you want to take on entrenched interests, unions and bureaucrats on behalf of ordinary people. I can’t help but love his brusqueness and near- Boris levels of charm.
On the other hand the public record is littered with moments in which he seems to enjoy using his power and authority to cut ordinary people off at the knees – calling constituents ‘‘ idiots’’ on a regular basis, referring to Democrats in his state as ‘‘ animals’’ and generally acting as an entertaining but slightly disturbing bully whenever he is challenged.
Maybe, I thought, this is the kind of mixed bag you always get with effective politicians, especially those running rambunctious, rowdy, industrial states such as New Jersey. Sometimes you need a bit a bully to face down some other bullies. Then last week I could feel my sense of him shift – perhaps decisively. I have a feeling I’m not alone.
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You may know the story by now, but in the run- up to Christie’s landslide re- election as New Jersey governor last year his top staffers decided one day to create a traffic nightmare in Fort Lee, a town next to the George Washington Bridge that goes from New Jersey into New York City – which just happens to be the busiest bridge on the planet. The mayor of Fort Lee had declined to endorse Christie for re- election.
So on an August morning last year Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly – no minor figure – emailed a Christie appointee, who was running the George Washington Bridge, the following words: ‘‘ Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.’’ The response: ‘‘ Got it.’’
It reads like some sort of shorthand for something that was not unusual between the two officials. Several access lanes to the bridge were then closed, on the anniversary of 9/ 11 no less, creating a traffic nightmare for the disloyal town for several days. Buses couldn’t get pupils to school on time; ambulances were delayed in emergencies; and New Jerseyans, not exactly quiet, stoic types, blew their collective gaskets.
As the gridlock mounted, more emails from Christie’s top staff emerged. They read like something out of The Sopranos. ‘‘ Is it wrong that I am smiling?’’ David Wildstein ( the bridge official) texted Kelly. ‘‘ No,’’ she texted back.
Now it’s important to note that the scandal that took off last week was not exactly news. The suggestion that the traffic jams had been deliberately created as payback was well aired all last autumn and the legislature was investigating – that’s how these emails finally came to light. But throughout the entire scandal Christie had categorically denied any wrongdoing and had even mocked those who persisted in asking questions.
So last week he was forced to hold a bravura press conference, announced that he had sacked Kelly and insisted that this kind of petty vindictiveness and vendetta was utterly alien to his administration.
If you were to study scandal management, it was a professional performance. And yet, to my mind, it barely helped a bit.
Why? Because Christie gave no explanation of why the scandal might have happened at all, or how his top staff could treat such behaviour as something routine and amusing. He told us that he had just sacked Kelly without even asking her into his office to explain herself. In fact, he hadn’t talked to her since the emails emerged. That is a very curious thing for someone trying to get to the bottom of a scandal that could sink him. It’s not so curious if your main objective is keeping your distance from a scandal that you were well aware of.
Why, after all, would he not want to know why a top aide had allegedly lied to his face? Why would he not want to know the motive – if he were going to stand in front of the press the next day and answer questions? The more you thought about his Full Denial Jacket, the more the unanswered questions mounted. Indeed, in retrospect the press conference had an air of panic about it in the totality of its denial. And he simply could not explain why his top staff had felt it was completely normal to talk about these kinds of shenanigans as if they were routine – and in prose that might have been written by Martin Scorsese.
The real danger for Christie is that it’s very easy to understand for most voters. Everyone hates traffic. But to be snarled needlessly in it for a week because your governor had a petty score to settle is a recipe for road rage. Everyone loves a punchy fighter to defend their interests against public sector unions, but there’s a big difference in punching up against the powerful and punching down to keep children from getting to school on time.
So I fear that Christie just imploded. When you come across as a bit of a bruising bully in the first place, you had better be sure never to give the impression that you are willing to bully voters like pawns in internecine, political vendettas. That’s textbook Nixonian vindictiveness – especially when you are cruising to a landslide victory anyway. And when you have already alienated huge tranches of your own party ( as Christie has) you do not have the kind of support that can sustain you in a firestorm such as this one. Indeed, almost as many Republicans turned on him last week as Democrats.
I would feel sorry for him if he hadn’t directly asked for this. And I would feel more sanguine about his political future if it didn’t seem obvious to me that he has climbed out very far on a long limb of complete denial in this scandal, while throwing someone who knows everything, Kelly, under the proverbial bus. That’s a huge relief today at the risk of a huge pending revelation. At some point, after all, Kelly will be under oath. And she now has no reason not to tell the whole truth.