The Opinion Pages|Op-Ed Columnist Christie Plays Defense JAN. 31, 2014 Gail Collins Do you think Chris Christie will be able to enjoy the Super Bowl? Everything looked so promising. The whole sports-loving world’s fixated stare upon New Jersey. Plus, not insanely cold. And then a lawyer for one of the key players in the great bridge-lane-closing scandal drops a letter suggesting there’s evidence the governor knew about what happened before he said he knew about what happened. Back to Bridgegate! This comes on the heels of the saga about a New York City congressman threatening to throw a reporter over a balcony in our nation’s Capitol. In response to which, former Congressman Anthony Weiner resurfaced with an op-ed in The New York Daily News, offering useful advice from his personal experience. (“A congressman should not threaten to break, throw, ask to step aside or otherwise get physical with a reporter.”) I am getting a little worried about the metropolitan region. Also, now that I think of it, this was the week in which Donald Trump announced that he would run for governor of New York on the Republican line, as long as they give him the nomination without making him run in a primary or go to the convention. But the good news is that we’re ignoring Trump entirely. As well as non-New York reports on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s defense of Justin Bieber and Bristol Palin’s critique on the parenting skills of Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. Christie, however, is national news. And the scandal we’re talking about involves two of the favorite topics of conversation in modern America, bullying and traffic. David Wildstein, a former official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, did his best to ruin Christie’s weekend in a letter from his lawyer, which claims that Wildstein “can prove the inaccuracy” of some of the statements Christie has made. Wildstein is the one who closed down two of the three access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, creating epic traffic backups for several days before the election last fall. Inquiring minds want to know whether this was somebody’s idea of a good way to get even with political opponents. Wildstein, who pleaded the Fifth at a legislative hearing on the saga, also used to be described frequently as a high school buddy of the governor’s. “We didn’t travel in the same circles in high school,” Christie said coolly, in a dramatic I-knew-nothing press conference after Wildstein had resigned. “You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don’t know what David was doing during that period of time.” Snap! There go the ties that bind. Or perhaps Wildstein’s breaking heart. We don’t know exactly what inaccuracies Wildstein is talking about unveiling. Maybe it’s a senior class yearbook autographed “To David, my very best friend in the entire world, Chris.” Or: “To David, a guy who can always stop traffic.” Maybe there’s a tape of the governor threatening to throw Wildstein over a balcony. One thing’s for sure — this comes at a really good time for those of us who know nothing about football. We’ve been at a terrible disadvantage over the past few weeks as the national conversation has been all about the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. We do not care about the medical history of the wide receiver’s hip. We have never heard of Knowshon Moreno. We don’t even have an opinion about who wants it more. However, some of us do have strong feelings about whether or not Chris Christie could have weathered several weeks of controversy over those backed-up bridges, then discovered the truth and fired a top aide without ever asking her what the hell had happened. We also know, thanks to a Times report by Kate Zernike and David Chen, that Christie’s staff kept color-coded dossiers on the mayors of 100 towns they wanted to win in the November election, and that Christie is a guy so detail-obsessed that he had personally overseen appointments to the State Board of Physical Therapy Examiners. It is possible that he knew nothing, nothing, nothing. But it does seem a little bit like a coach claiming he never could keep all those players’ numbers straight. And Christie’s political quarterback, who also was summarily canned, turns out to have formerly worked on Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. What kind of résumé is that? And the lawyer Christie hired to represent him during the ongoing bridge investigation used to be Giuliani’s mayoral chief of staff. And now that we think of it, the congressman who threatened to throw the reporter over the balcony was a Giuliani favorite. Can we work out a conspiracy theory in which everything terrible that’s happened in New York or New Jersey politics is Rudy Giuliani’s fault? Let the games begin. A version of this op-ed appears in print on February 1, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Christie Plays Defense. Order Reprints|Todays Paper|Subscribe
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 07:22:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015