Talk about delusional.
The New York Times reports that Chris Christie and his team were working hard to salvage his Presidential hopes.
Should we be blunt? Mr. Christie. You will NOT get the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. I hate pundits to talk as if they are certain but of this I am CERTAIN.
You are done.
You don’t have a chance.
You’re toast.
You’re burnt toast.
You and your team are hanging on which suggests all of you think “denial” is a river. Your moment came — and went — in 2012. And then it came — and went — the day before Bridgegate broke. You are now are damaged goods. You used to be colorful; now you come across as a bully. People considered you a straight talker; now you have credibility problems. News that some of your aides are being charges doesn’t exonerate you: at best, this makes you seem like an incompetent who couldn’t a)control your underlings, b)didn’t know what your underlings were doing in your name. At worst, the whole affair still has a whiff of you knew but you carefully made sure there was plausible deniability.
But hope — and delusions — spring eternal, as The Times notes:
Around 7:30 a.m., as an audience of technology executives started streaming through the ballroom doors of a Ritz-Carlton Hotel in suburban Virginia on Friday, Chris Christie’s iPhone buzzed with the grim news he has awaited for 16 months.
Federal charges were coming in the bizarre case of traffic and revenge with which he had become synonymous.
Mr. Christie, the governor of New Jersey, consulted with advisers, adjusted his jet-black suit and gamely walked onto a stage before 300 guests eating yogurt parfait and almond croissants. He recited statistics about Social Security and Medicare costs and projected the air of a man thoroughly unbothered by the swirling legal drama back in New Jersey, which he left unmentioned.
But behind the scenes, his aides, his allies and even his wife were mobilizing, working the phones and blasting out memos to supporters, trying to hold on to whatever chance Mr. Christie had to make a run at the presidency, according to interviews.
Fini. It’s over. You need a massive rehabilitation in terms of your image — not just damage control, buster or determination. And you can’t do that in time for 2016.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was in Virginia on Friday. He has repeatedly said he did not know about the closing of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.
On Friday, Bridget Anne Kelly, who has proclaimed her innocence, suggested that sarcastic comments she made amid the George Washington Bridge lane closings had been taken too seriously.
Over the next few hours, Mary Pat Christie called donors, trying to offer reassurance that everything was still on track and encouraging them to read her husband’s speech on overhauling the federal entitlement system.
That won’t be the issue now it’ll be:
1. How is he doing in the polls (don’t expect them to zoom up with the latest news)?
2. Would he provide the Democrats with ammunition so attacks on him would dwarf or short-circuit Republican messages for 2016? To some, Christie’s baggage is now so suspicious TSA may want to frisk him.
Mr. Christie himself, joined by top aides, reached out to longtime financial supporters, like the billionaires Kenneth Langone and Stanley Druckenmiller, to talk through what he saw as the limited scope of the indictment.
AKA: Damage control.
And Mr. Christie’s political action committee emailed talking points for loyal backers to deliver to the news media, framing the guilty plea of David Wildstein, a former Christie ally, and the indictment of the governor’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, and his appointee, Bill Baroni, as a moment of vindication.
“Key messages,” the talking points read. “Today’s announcement reinforces what the governor has said since Day 1.” Mr. Christie, they said, “had no knowledge or involvement in the planning, motivation, authorization or execution of the decision to realign lanes on the George Washington Bridge.”
In call after call, they squeezed whatever optimism they could from an ugly day, calling the legal charges the “best possible outcome in a bad situation.”
Nope. It makes him appear as if he’s an incompetent leader.
Or a Machiavellian one.
But why should GOPers choose him when they have a huge Hometown Buffet of candidates on appealing presentation plates being presented to them?
Why choose the one that might be stale, or give you political ptomaine?
graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.