By Marc Jampole
We should give New Jersey Governor Chris Christie the
benefit of the doubt and assume that he told the absolute truth. He did not know members of his staff ordered
the closing of a lane leading onto to the George Washington Bridge as political
retribution. When he asked about the
lane closing, two members of his staff lied to him.
In his “mea culpa” news conference, New Jersey Governor
Chris Christies sounded as sincere and honest as a human can appear.
But he also spoke with cunning and extreme care.
Throughout the news conference, Christie carefully parsed
words and redirected questions—all with his refreshing brand of
straight-talk—to avoid the topic of whether he practices political retribution.
His focus was solely on the sheer stupidity of the action and the fact that
people lied to him. He berated himself for creating an organizational culture in
which staff members thought they could lie to him. He never addressed his role
in creating a culture in which retribution was condoned and encouraged. When
asked specifically about retribution against the Ft. Lee mayor, he did not
speak about retribution but about the fact that he hardly knew the man. He did
not deny he practiced retribution, instead suggesting that you only commit
dirty tricks on someone who you know.
True enough, but it slides right over the question of whether Christie
believes in dirty tricks.
Christie’s avoidance of the retribution issue reminds me of
Anthony Weiner’s comments about his sexting when he first announced he was
running for mayor. He said that there might be other instances revealed, but he
did so in passing and parenthetically, almost hypothetically, so that it was completely
ignored at the time. Weiner was deceptive in his honesty, just as Christie is.
I might even say that Christie “pulled a Weiner,” but the image is just too
grotesque.
The news media passed over the Weiner comment, which led to
their collective shock when the next scandal involving Weiner’s electronic
sexual practices popped up. The efforts
of Democrats to place the media focus on Christie’s culture of retribution is
having only limited success, at least at this point.
That someone in an organization would think that it was just
business as usual to create a safety hazard and mess with the lives of tens of
thousands of people is, as the Latins liked to say, res ipsa loquitur, a thing that proves itself. Either
it was Christie’s habit to condone retribution or two key staff members he had
known for years had somehow managed to hide a rare and malevolent stupidity
from their boss and everyone else. Christie
doesn’t strike me as socially or politically dense. His past in what many journalists are calling
“rough and tumble” Morris county politics and known scandals involving others
close to Christie build the case that the politics of retribution thrived in
his Administration.
Bridgegate
will not sink Christie’s hopes for national office. No one seriously thinks
that a man this poised and clever would approve shutting down access to the
most travelled bridge in the world for trivial revenge. But the news media will
now go on an aggressive hunt to find other instances of Christie or his cronies
using dirty tricks for political purposes. Other scandals will emerge—and it’s
very possible that none will approach the notoriety of Bridgegate. But the
accumulation of these past tits and tats may very well sink Christie.
Or they
may enhance his status among Republicans, who seem to like dirty tricks and
political pranks. It was a Republican, Andrew Breitbart, who did Fascist-style
video editing to make it appear as if a minor Obama Administration official
uttered racist comments. And another Republican pretended to be a pimp and
asked staff at multiple ACORN offices for help getting government loans until
he found someone who appeared—on the video—to take him seriously. What if not a
dirty trick was the swift-boat smearing of decorated war hero John Kerry and
saying he didn’t really deserve his many medals? The pain Christie officials
inflicted on commuters for four relatively balmy September days is nothing
compared to the suffering resulting from the dirty trick of getting Iran to
keep the American hostages until after the 1980 presidential election in return
for surreptitiously supplying it with weapons.
Come to
think of it, Bridgegate may have raised Christie’s esteem in the eyes of many
Republican political operatives and elected officials. It confirms that he has
the “cojones” to do what it takes. Sincerely.
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