New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie still thinks the entire American media establishment
owes him an apology.
“They got crazy over Bridgegate and were convicting me the day afterwards of heinous acts,” Christie said. “Now, when they realize that there’s no truth to what they said, they say, ‘Oh, well, he didn’t do anything, but he created an atmosphere.’ Well, that’s what the liberal media does rather than saying ‘I’m sorry,’ which is what they should say.”
But in fact the story that has emerged so far (and it is only
so far, because in spite of Christie's insistence that all this is water under a certain bridge there has been no guarantee that the indictments handed out so far will be the last word in the matter) has turned out to be largely what everyone expected. Yes, his office fouled up traffic as pure political retribution against a perceived enemy. And yes, there have been a
lot of similar instances of political retribution and general crookedness, whether it be
withholding hurricane aid unless a particular real estate deal is inked, or
squashing criminal charges against his allies, or
handing out debris from the buildings destroyed on 9/11 as trophies to supporters.
Created an atmosphere is putting it gently; the man ran the governor's office with all the finesse of a mafia boss.
That Christie can take all of this and declare himself vindicated because it was only his closest aides being led away in handcuffs, not himself, is evidence both of the man's remarkable self-regard and the extremely depressed standards of the Republican Party. He is not the only candidate to be running for the presidency after top staff members were been indicted for egregiously crooked behavior inside his office; Scott Walker has been spewing a long, billowing trial of corruption from his tailpipe ever since he first put keys to his career. And while Christie takes great pride in not being personally indicted for any of the things that have happened on his watch, fellow candidate Rick Perry has been indicted for crimes while in office, and showed up for his mugshot cleaned and pressed and with a ten-gallon smile on his five-gallon head. By gum, you can't buy publicity like that—am I right?
Not indicted is not, despite recent protestations to the contrary, a selling point. If you are selling yourself as the leader of tomorrow because no matter what your office and your chosen circle of allies has done you have been able to serve out your term without being personally jailed, that is what we call a very low bar. No, I do not think the press needs to apologize for loudly investigating whether or not criminal behavior among your top staffers undertaken to advance your goals and plotted out in-between their meetings with you can be traced to you yourself. You are not a martyr here.
If Gov. Chris Christie had a shot at winning the presidency, his apparent proximity to all sorts of crooked acts would no doubt become an enormous issue. He does not have that shot, however, because nearly everyone who has ever heard of Chris Christie is sick of him. This insistence that the only real victim in his office's various corruption scandals is poor little him is one of the big reasons why.