Embattled Christie facing two investigations

What happened

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was facing the gravest political crisis of his career this week, as state lawmakers intensified their scrutiny of a political payback scandal that saw top aides manufacture a huge traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge. With legislators issuing subpoenas to current and former Christie aides, federal officials launched a separate investigation into allegations that Christie misused Hurricane Sandy funds. The twin scandals threatened to seriously damage the tough-talking Christie’s standing as the front-runner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. The bridge scandal exploded last week after subpoenaed emails and text messages revealed that the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, and David Wildstein, a Christie appointee to the Port Authority, conspired to shut several access lanes to the bridge in September. The closure was apparently intended to punish the Democratic mayor of nearby Fort Lee for failing to endorse Christie’s 2013 re-election, and brought four days of paralyzing gridlock.

In a two-hour press conference last week, the governor fired Kelly and apologized for his staffers’ “callous and indifferent” behavior, saying he had no “knowledge or involvement” in the shutdown. The Democratic-controlled state legislature formed a new special committee with subpoena powers to unravel the chain of command behind the closures and examine whether Christie is telling the truth. The governor is also facing an investigation by federal authorities over his decision to spend $4.7 million of Sandy relief funds on a tourism campaign featuring his family, which rolled out during his re-election bid. The ads cost $2.2 million more than the lowest bid.

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What the editorials said

Whether or not he’s telling the truth, Christie is badly damaged, said the New York Daily News. If he was aware of the lane closures, which delayed ambulances from reaching desperately ill people, then he’s “a monster.” If he knew nothing, then he’s a bad manager who “built a top staff of lying thugs” like Wildstein, who in one text dismissed schoolkids stuck in traffic as “the children of [Barbara] Buono voters”—a reference to Christie’s Democratic opponent in the 2013 gubernatorial election.

This local scandal has national repercussions, said The Washington Post. Christie’s record of working with Democrats made him a real contender for the presidency, and “the leading centrist within a GOP that is listing dangerously right.” If Christie can prove that his subordinates acted without his knowledge or approval, then he may “survive to carry the flag for the center right. If not, he’ll have to make way for someone else.”

What the columnists said

“Christie’s problem is that he’s really, truly a bully,” said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. He has a long history of publicly berating citizens who dare question his policies, and has “a tendency to privately punish them, too.” Stories about these abuses of power are now pouring out. Even if he survives the investigations, “Bridgegate” finishes Christie as a presidential candidate, said Isaac Chotiner in NewRepublic.com.His appeal came from the perception that he was “an irascible, straight-talking, average guy” who took no crap. But now his fabled “toughness will come across as bullying; ‘straight talk’ will seem gimmicky; anger will appear thuggish.”

This is liberal hysteria, said Jonah Goldberg in the New York Post. Yes, it’s outrageous that “innocent constituents were deliberately inconvenienced for political purposes.” But President Obama employed similar tactics during the government shutdown, furloughing air traffic controllers with the aim of turning the public against the GOP. The media ignored that scandal, but are swarming on Christie like hungry piranhas because he “is widely seen as a threat to whoever the Democratic nominee will be” in 2016.

As unfair as the pile-on might be, said Jonathan Tobin in -CommentaryMagazine.com, Republicans better find someone else to run for president. Christie’s enemies will milk the investigations for as long as they can and spool out damaging details, making it impossible for him “to prepare a presidential candidacy.” I don’t know who should top the list of possible GOP nominees, but “the one thing I know is that it shouldn’t be Christie.”