In the midst of all this Sandy-craziness, Romney-surrogate Chris Christie has been making the rounds on many of the cable news show heaping praise on Barack Obama for what a great job he’s done in handling the disaster response in New Jersey, even complimenting his “great leadership” shown.
When he was asked if Romney (who he is supposed to be a main, if not the main, surrogate for) might tour the area of New Jersey that has been ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, Christie said something to the effect of “I have no clue and I don’t care. Do you really think presidential politics is on my mind right now?” hell yeah I do “I have governing to do.”
Now don’t paint me a cynic but something has seemed a bit off about Christie’s surrogacy for Romney this entire election season. What it has looked like is someone who has their eye on future political goals for themselves, for Christie that goal would be the White House. This latest manuever fits that mold. Seem like a leader, seem Presidential. ‘What, me, politics?! I care about the people!’
He wants to be a viable candidate in four years and he knows Romney sucks. He is doing everything he can to set the groundwork now. What do y’all think?
This is completely consistent with his past actions. He’s pretty much a straight shooter who is willing to praise whoever is doing the right thing, regardless of party. I don’t particularly like his politics, but he seems like a fairly uncomplicated guy when it comes to basic stuff.
Yeah, pretty much what you guys said - his main concern is seeing to it the people who elected him get all the help he can get for them to get their lives back in order. He also knows that not doing that would hurt his career, too.
The people involved in politics are often a lot less partisan than their supporters.
Examples from the Supreme Court: Rehnquist and Marshall were good friends. So too Scalia and Kagan, Scalia and Ginsberg.
Christie is a straight shooter who loves, and is loyal to, New Jersey and his constituents. Would that more politicians shared those characteristics, on every part of the political spectrum.
Chris Christie is a political whore, but on this one I think he’s genuinely distraught about what has happened to his state and doesn’t want to be hassled with petty bullshit right now.
It’s the way he deals with Romney that is so off-putting. He seems to throw him under the bus when he’s supposed to be talking him up (I mean, it is the truth but still, the truth ain’t gonna get Romney elected).
I think that this interpretation of what he said is off the mark, and I’ve seen it a few places around the web tonight. Christie didn’t say anything unkind about Romney at all. He got upset with Steve Doocy for injecting partisan politics into the conversation. His beef (such as it was) was with Fox News, not Mitt Romney.
It’s not his actions that I’m talking about. It’s his on-air performance in regards to those governing-actions on all the news shows and the way he seemed to simultaneously tout Obama while dismissing Romney. As a main surrogate for his presidential campaign, it seems a bit ill-fitting.
You seem to be upset that Christie didn’t waste a second on the Presidential campaign while the state he feels responsible for is falling apart. You’re somehow bothered that Christie applauded the behavior of the President when the behavior of the President helped him and his state. You shouldn’t be bothered by these things. This is how normal people behave. This is the kind of thing you would see all the time if our politics wasn’t so fucked up and infested with weasels.
I think I do understand why you feel some suspicion. After all, journalists, the stupidest collection of people on the face of the Earth, have gotten it into their little pea-brains that everything is best understood by cynicism. They reflexively add a layer of cynical, ugly thinking to what politicians say and do. So we hear it all the time. Ever notice they’re usually cynical in their analysis but never in their interviews of politicians? I’ve fallen for it too but not this time because if I turn off my suspicions, it’s pretty obvious that Christie was tired and speaking from the heart.
Christie also showed disapproval for leaders he thought was hurting his state and its people. Did you feel he had his eye on the white house when he was criticizing these people?
I saw his interviews on MSNBC and FOX this morning. You’re quoting from the FOX interview. It was FOX that was trying to talk up Romney and this disaster. It’s not the time to talk about Romney because Romney has no pull and no control over how this situation develops. Romney is not involved. Christie shut the interviewer down with the tact such a question deserved.
Incidentally, Christie did make it more likely that I would vote for him if he were running for the Presidency. It would be the first time I ever voted for a Republican. He didn’t bias my opinion by cynically calculating what were the best things to say. He did it by being honest and a leader.
Don’t let your cynicism and the reflexive cynicism of talking heads make it impossible for you to see that a person is showing their emotions, their exasperation, their appreciation, and their capability to be a strong leader. Think of it this way: someday I may get the chance to get a capable leader into the white house after Obama’s next term!
If this was the first and only such instance of Christie not embracing Romney too tightly in public during this campaign, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it as much. But it just seems like a bit of a pattern with Christie.
I must have misunderstood the tone of your posts. I did not realize you were not exhibiting any negativity toward Christie’s behavior in that particular interview.
To poke a second hole in your thesis I can offer up the anecdote that Christie was in Colorado earlier in the campaign and he spoke quite favorably of Romney.
As to the OP’s question: Both. Christie knows that he’s a national figure and that everything he does for the next four or eight years will be dredged up and scrutinized. He also knows that he has a job to do, and it doing it. These things are not remotely in conflict.
Yes. Objectively, Christie is aided by a Romney loss. Operationally, he doesn’t give a damn about him. So he takes the high road today, which is good policy and good politics. During the Republican convention, he talked about “Tough love”, a speech which basically stomped upon the one offered up by Ann Romney. Sure, he’ll campaign for Mitt, but he doesn’t pull out all the stops. The fact that Obama is the favored candidate also plays a role.
Finally, while Christie is certainly an A-List candidate, I’m not sure he has the necessary physical stamina and endurance for the Oval Office. The campaign will test that: he might not be able pull it off and in some corner of the mind he may know that. Nonetheless he’s wholly qualified for the Vice-Presidency: he would make a terrific attack dog and that’s not faint praise.
I’m not a huge fan of Christie but he’s doing exactly what a governor should be doing when his state got hammered like it did. I believe his distress over what his citizens are going through is genuine as is his tossing politics aside for the time being during a time of crisis. I think his national stock goes up as a result of his handling of Sandy and at least for now, that appears to be as it should.
