Chris, We Hardly Knew Ye
Take heart, America, even all bad things must end. After eight years of enduring the original obnoxious blowhard, Chris Christie, we in New Jersey have a new Governor and no longer have to deal with a Chief Executive who called an ex-Navy SEAL an “idiot” in a public forum, labelled a critic on talk radio “another Communist from Montclair,” and engaged in many other confrontations when anyone dared to question his policies.
Of course, Christie is a model of decorum when compared to a President whose recent remarks on immigration mark him as, at worst, a racist, and, at best, as someone who thinks the President of the United States can act with the worst of them at a local bar. And he doesn’t even have their excuse of having had a few pops since he refrains from alcohol in favor of Diet Coke. But, Christie is New Jersey’s own, and we will miss him for his uncanny ability to claim reelection in 2013 with 61% of the votes and turn it into the 14% approval ratings with which he left office this week.
Of course, the worst of the downturn was the result of Bridgegate, an act of political retribution so clumsy that it is insulting to the ingenuity of the average Garden Stater. In order to deflect blame, this micromanager had to claim ignorance of the plan and its execution, tacitly acknowledging that he did not have control of some of his closest aides. And who can forget Beachgate, where Christie and his family lounged on the white sands of Island State Park while a state budget dispute kept the park closed to the rest of the state’s residents during a sweltering holiday weekend?
There were many other politically blind moments in the Christie governorship: the State Police helicopter to his son’s state high school baseball game, the 500 days he spent outside the state in his delusional bid for the Republican Presidential nomination and his killing the third railway tunnel into New York over budget concerns, which came back to haunt him as derailments and delays continued to plague the long-neglected system, with no end in sight.
Even Christie’s most astute political move, being the first major Republican to endorse Trump, backfired when his shameless obsequiousness failed to win him an expected major appointment to the new administration and he was even stripped of his early role as head of the Transition team. Maybe it was a problem that, as U.S. Attorney, he sent Jared’s father to a federal lockup. You think?
So, is this really the end for Chris Christie in New Jersey politics? Speculation for his future ranges from hosting a sports call-in show on WFAN to a job in the financial sector. Maybe he can call his good friend Jerry Jones, the owner of his beloved Dallas Cowboys for a job. But whatever he does, he is not likely to have the big stage again. Maybe he should have thought about that before he let the size of his ego exceed his not inconsiderable bulk.
