Nobody Loves Chris

I watched the big bad "Christie’s Apology Show” yesterday and I have to tell you watching the “Big Fat Liar” movie would have been more entertaining. This guy who could be “King” reminded me of the reincarnation of “Tricky Dick" Nixon as Watergate unfolded. Poor Dick complained and sought pity as if he was clueless in the whole matter. Ok, I digress – Back to New Jersey!

This guy, let’s call him the Fat Man. Now, before you get angry. I chose this name [Fat Man] because there was a gangster I knew growing up who had his finger on everything that happened in town. He was brash, a bully, and almost everyone feared him because of his power. He was also known to exact swift and harsh retribution when he felt wronged or disrespected.

The Governor, sounded a lot like Tricky Dick, who famously said, “I am not a Crook” shortly before he was impeached, said “I am not a bully”. Oh, really! I read a New York Times [excerpt follows] piece a few weeks ago that would lead one to think differently base on his public outbursts and his personal style.

In 2010, John F. McKeon, a New Jersey assemblyman, made what he thought was a mild comment on a radio program: Some of the public employees that Gov. Chris Christie was then vilifying had been some of the governor’s biggest supporters. He was surprised to receive a handwritten note from Mr. Christie, telling him that he had heard the comments, and that he didn’t like them. “I thought it was a joke,” Mr. McKeon recalled. “What governor would take the time to write a personal note over a relatively innocuous comment?”

But the gesture would come to seem genteel compared with the fate suffered by others in disagreements with Mr. Christie: a former governor who was stripped of police security at public events; a Rutgers professor who lost state financing for cherished programs; a state senator whose candidate for a judgeship suddenly stalled; another senator who was disinvited from an event with the governor in his own district.

Now, the governor is dogged by another accusation of petty political revenge. Two close political allies ordered the abrupt shutdown of two local access lanes on the George Washington Bridge in September, grid locking Fort Lee, N.J., for four days. The borough’s mayor said it was punitive because he had declined to endorse the governor’s re-election.

The governor mocked the suggestion as preposterous. But Democrats in New Jersey — and privately, some Republicans too — say it would hardly be out of character for Mr. Christie. As the governor prepares to run for president, the accusation has reinforced his reputation as a bully.

“Every organization takes its cues from the leadership as to what’s acceptable and what’s not, and this governor, in his public appearances, has made thuggery acceptable,” said Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, the Democrat leading the hearings that have exposed the role of the governor’s aides in the lane closings. “For the governor to say, ‘I knew nothing about this’? He created the atmosphere in which this is acceptable.”

It was the governor’s penchant for confrontation that first propelled him onto the national stage in 2010. As he pushed to cut public employee benefits, his staff celebrated video clips of him dressing down teachers at town hall-style meetings by posting them on YouTube. (“You want to come up here? Come up here,” the governor said to one teacher, a fellow Republican, who hesitated until the governor’s security state troopers gave him no choice. Wagging a finger, Mr. Christie lectured the man, then dismissed him from the hall.)

From then until now, the Fat Man has on numerous occasions has behaved in a manner unbecoming of a publicly hired official with a lot of which is on camera. Let me say, I don’t live in New Jersey and only know what I read but from what I have seen I will conclude that this guy acts much in the way the old gangster the Fat Man behaved. I don’t like to make predictions but I don’t think the Governor will live out this term in which he was just elected.

Finally, I don’t want another Tricky Dick in the White House and if you think he is a good bet. Then I have a bridge to sell you! And that’s my thought provoking perspective…