Chris Christie reassures Matt Bai, formerly the lead political soothsayer for the New York Times, that the scandals slowly dashing his Presidential hopes like scattering debris from an approaching Superstorm will prompt him to "learn things:"
“I will learn things from this,” Chris Christie told me last Friday, a little more than a week after he gave the News Conference to End All News Conferences, and a few days after the cable channels covered his annual address to the legislature in Trenton as if it were Nixon waving from the helicopter. “I know I will. I don’t know exactly what it is yet that I’ll learn from it. But when I get the whole story and really try to understand what’s going on here, I know I’m going to learn things.”
New Jerseyans must be reassured that their Governor still considers himself on the "learning curve," and ready to "get the whole story," even as his longtime aides and high school buddies lawyer up and begin to
beg for immunity.
But some would suggest he doesn't need to learn anything. He already knows certain things, as a former Federal prosecutor sworn to uphold the law. According to the Wall Street Journal, Christie's strategy thus far is exactly what you would expect from someone familiar with the way prosecutions work:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's decision to not talk to the senior advisers he jettisoned after the George Washington Bridge scandal erupted appears to be part of a careful legal strategy, experts said.
* * *
[T]the governor is following a standard playbook to minimize his legal exposure.
"Don't talk to witnesses in a criminal investigation if you're one of the people under investigation. It's one of the top rules," said William Jeffress Jr., a Washington trial lawyer who isn't involved in the case. "What he said is exactly what every experienced criminal defense lawyer would advise him to do."
He already knows, for example, that it's not a good idea for him to ask too many questions:
"I'm just trying to be a safe and careful steward of the public trust," he said at a Jan. 9 news conference. "And would I love to have more information yesterday? You bet. But I also have to understand the position I hold."
One might be excused for wondering why the
position he holds as a
careful steward of the public trust didn't prompt him a while back to be a
tad more inquisitive about what his top aides allegedly did or did not do with his full knowledge, but hey, this is legal stuff--can't be too careful.
Of course there are some things that the Governor could still learn. The Republican Party has gently suggested he may want to ditch his current crop of sycophants:
Republicans around the country, including those who saw him as their party’s most compelling candidate for president in 2016, are calling in with advice, sobering in its candor.
* * *
Party leaders are urging the governor to let go of a trademark Christie trait: his fierce loyalty to old friends and high school classmates who have risen with him in state government. It is time, they counsel, for him to recruit a more nationally savvy political team that can take him beyond Trenton to Washington.
The problem is that the GOP made these suggestions before the Hoboken story broke. So it's not so clear whether this imaginary "savvy dream team" could even be created at this point.
Then there's always the option of rethinking his entire strategy. After all, that's why they call it a learning curve. In fact, the New York Daily News this morning appears somewhat skeptical of Christie's current approach as the scandals begin to multiply:
Now the problem for New Jersey’s Chris Christie is more than traffic cones on the George Washington Bridge. Now a much bigger problem for him is the mayor of Hoboken saying that a member of the Christie administration shook her down for a political favor for a rich developer, and threatened to hold back funding that Hoboken wanted and badly needed after Hurricane Sandy if she didn’t play along.
It is why Christie needs for the Hoboken mayor to be just one more person telling lies about him for political gain, and piling on. Because if she’s not, then way too many people in Christie’s administration start to look like they think this is “Boardwalk Empire” and they’re working for Gov. Nucky.
Or he might
learn that he just needs to cultivate some better friends. Noting that Rudy Giuliani fairly leapt to the Governor's defense on the Sunday talk shows, all but calling the scandal a Democratic-inspired political witch-hunt, the
Daily News quotes an unidentified political insider as casting a withering eye. Speaking of Giuliani:
You know how many primaries he won once the country actually got to know him? None. You know how many delegates he won after spending about $50 million? One. So the idea that Christie was such a threat to the Democrats that they had to stop him now happens to be dumber than hamsters.
“[Christie] is twice as bad as Giuliani. [Giuliani] was a bully, too, but he understood politics and there were certain things he wouldn’t do. Christie has been on a continual roll and he thinks he’s invincible. And once you think you are invincible, you’ve got a problem.”
But maybe the best advice for Christie is just to wait until his head clears:
He described his state of mind, after hearing about the incriminating e-mails from one of his closest aides, as “completely disorienting, like I got hit across the forehead with a 2x4.”
Better get that checked out, Governor. It's so hard to learn anything after that kind of injury.