Chris Christie's fall shows subservient postures offer no protection
Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump with then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at a campaign rally in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2016. Credit: AFP/Getty Images/LAURA BUCKMAN
The end-time of ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's public career forms the backdrop of his new book. Reading the excerpts released, you may wonder why he published it, given the self-abnegation it required and the gloating it invites from those mean-spirited enough to still mock the misfortunes of someone who is well past embodying old news.
First Christie ran for president while facing term limits in his home state. Grabbing for the biggest prize of all can leave you in worse repute than before. Clearly it was an overreach for Christie, who tried to find a way to big power in what would be Donald Trump's winning 2016 season. Trump on the campaign trail said — as ever, without evidence — that Christie knew about unjustifiable lane closings at the heart of the George Washington Bridge scandal before they happened.
And yet, when time came to drop out, Christie ran conspicuously into Trump's arms, a moment that fell far short of stanching the personal humiliation of loss and surrender. Trump at one point in the campaign told him he was too bulky and "to wear a longer tie" to look thinner. Once long ago, Christie prosecuted son-in-law Jared Kushner's father, Charles, so when the time came to form a cabinet, Ivanka Trump's husband allegedly blocked his chances.
Christie writes that Trump has a "revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia."
After failing to defeat Trump, Christie's own sycophant status got him nowhere.
Right there you may find the big take-away for Republicans, Democrats and everyone else: Subservient postures offer no protection from alienation and exile, not in Trumpworld.
Consider the present status of Michael "I'd-take-a-bullet" Cohen, Steve "Deep State" Bannon, John "Use the Sword on the Press" Kelly and Michael "Lock-her-up" Flynn.
In the book, Christie piles further on the piled-upon Flynn, tagging him as a "Russian lackey and future federal felon." He called him "a train wreck from beginning to end . . . a slow-motion car crash."
The memoir is called "Let Me Finish." Clearly, Christie hasn't finished speaking in the acid language of the Trump tweet. Perhaps that's the modern politician's way of sounding candid and bold.
And yet, by all accounts, he never eviscerates the man currently at the top.
Maybe Christie is still expecting something to come his way from the White House.
Are his ties long enough?
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
