Christie: Anatomy of an Apology

Make liberal use of the following words:  Sad.  Disappointed.  Heartbroken. Mistakes were made.  I accept full responsibility.  Rinse and repeat as needed, while simultaneously denying any knowledge of what happened.

These are the default instructions for the contemporary political apology, and ones used quite effectively by presumed GOP presidential front runner Chris Christie at a 106 minute (yes, 1 hr., 46 min.) press conference explaining away a political scandal that threatens to engulf him and his presidential aspirations (for the record, he used heartbroken three times).

It was other words from Governor Christie (R-NJ) that are actually most revealing, but let us start by considering the words of top Christie aides and allies which broke the scandal wide open.

Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff in Christie’s office e-mailed: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” to David Wildstein, a top Christie appointee on the powerful Port Authority, who responded: “Got it.”  Then, after shutting down all but one traffic lane to the George Washington Bridge (the world’s busiest and widest bridge) on the first day of school, Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich texted Bill Baroni, another top Christie appointee on the Port Authority, worried about massive traffic delays that threatened to make children late for class. “Help please,” Sokolich wrote. “It’s maddening.”  Then an unidentified person referenced that text message and wrote, “Is it wrong that I am smiling?,” to which another unidentified staffer replied “no.”

Christie expressed outrage, denied any knowledge of these goings-on, and then characterized the response of members of both his gubernatorial staff and campaign operation as “callous indifference.”

Unfortunate choice of words.  The evidence suggests it was hardly callous indifference, but rather outright glee or even schadenfreude expressed by Christie’s people about the effects of this political retribution or punishment.

Then consider “abject stupidity.”  These were the words chosen by Christie to describe the actions of his staff in the concluding sound byte of the scripted portion of his press conference.  This is notable because abject stupidity implies that the problem is just political (how stupid to think you could get away with this) rather than ethical or moral, in which case you might settle on something like “reprehensible” as your word of choice.

Then the Governor repeated over and over two words bound to go forth in infamy from this whole affair.  “Traffic study.”  This is what Christie said he was told and believed had taken place with the lane closings.  I see.  You conduct a traffic study by closing down all but one lane of traffic on the busiest bridge in the world on the first day of school.  Reminds me of the movie Trading Places, in which a rich man (Dan Akroyd) is destroyed and a poor man (Eddie Murphy) is rescued from jail and elevated to the rich man’s position in order to settle a one dollar bet on the nature vs. nurture argument.  Excellent data.

The most obvious of the many questions arising from this burgeoning scandal revolves around whether Christie is an old-time political boss who  has fostered a Tony Soprano culture around him.  Naturally, he repeatedly denied such a thing, but while it would be relatively easy to explain away the actions of a single staffer gone rogue, consider that of the two people fired by Christie this week, one was on his gubernatorial staff (Deputy Chief of Staff) and the other on his political team (Campaign Director).  Pretty hard to deny some kind of common culture when your political and executive arms are proven to be in cahoots in politically kneecapping a small town mayor.

This apparent thirst for retribution or punishment is particularly troubling when you consider that it came in the wake of a race that was never in doubt – Christie won by 22 points – and was aimed at a seemingly insignificant figure in the opposing party.  So what might Christie’s people do to significant political opponents, and what might they do in a competitive race?

By all accounts, Christie runs a very tight ship as Governor and is known to have effective control over his staff, so while we have no evidence he knew directly about the actions taken against the Fort Lee mayor, the question of whether Christie actually knew about this pales in comparison to the question of why he put people who would do this in top positions in both his administration and his campaign.

So we’re left with three possible conclusions:

1) Christie is chillingly vengeful, and hires into that character trait.  The Mayor of Jersey City reports that on the day he refused to endorse Christie, his city had ten, count ‘em, ten meetings with Christie administration officials cancelled in one fell swoop, and many other Democrats, not even Republicans, have implied that they believed if they declined to endorse Christie, he would withhold funding to their communities.  Expect further revelations in the days ahead.

2) He has demonstrated strikingly poor judgment by hiring people in positions of considerable authority who would do this kind of thing.

3) He is such a poor executive that this could go on without him having any knowledge of it.

Any one of those three possibilities is alarming and will almost certainly damage his presidential ambitions.  But if you think back about 14 months, perhaps this is not so surprising.

Remember the waning days of the 2012 presidential campaign, when Mitt Romney was in the midst of his final push to overtake Barack Obama.  Hurricane Sandy touched down and devastated New Jersey.  Obama sent federal aid to the Garden State.  And even though he had given the keynote address at the Republican convention and was awarded the job of premier surrogate speaker for Romney, Christie did not stop at thanking Obama for the federal aid, but bear hugged him, making a big enough show of his “bipartisan spirit” that the national media gleefully focused on it like a laser beam.  And some 20% of voters in exit polls said the turn of events in New Jersey affected their vote.

Many observers said Christie was well within his rights, that he was just protecting his state, and that trumps any political consideration, as if what Christie did with Obama had nothing to do with politics.  Wrong.  It had everything to do with politics.

While it was certainly appropriate to thank the president for the quick federal response to Hurricane Sandy, it was entirely unnecessary and extremely damaging to provide Obama with the ultimate bipartisan photo-op.  But Christie did it for his own political benefit, shoring up his bipartisan bona fides for his own reelection campaign for Governor in his blue state the next year…while crippling the last hopes for his own candidate.

Throw Mitt Romney under the bus, throw the a small town mayor and his constituents under the bus, throw anyone under the bus who gets in his way.  That’s the picture that’s building of Chris Christie and his people, political thugs who will sacrifice someone as big as Mitt Romney, as small as a small town mayor, and ultimately their own constituents in order to further his own political ambition or punish those who refuse to fall in line.

You might say we need a president who’s tough and can use a heavy hand to advance his agenda.  Fair enough, but the obsession with his own political advancement by him or his people led to actions that were not only repugnant but, in Christie’s own words, abjectly stupid.  So if he or his administration does something this stupid to a benign small town mayor in New Jersey, how will he handle hardballers like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who will never roll over for him, or anyone else?  If these people’s ambition clouds their judgment to this extent, is this a guy you would trust in the oval office?  Many people have attacked Barack Obama and his people for their Chicago-style politics.  Is this any different?

This scandal does not involve ideology, and that is what makes it particularly potent.  It will generate even more of an open season than usual for the media, which will undoubtedly stay on this for a good long time.  And expect this to keep haunting Christie if he decides he can still win the GOP nomination and ultimately, the presidency.