He was twice on the cover of National Review. He was the subject of admiring profiles in the Washington Post, Time, and, yes, THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Throughout his first term as governor of New Jersey, he was described time and again as a “rising star” of the GOP and a certain presidential contender. Though a moderately conservative Republican, he won reelection in a deep blue state with 60 percent of the vote in 2013.
Over the last four years, Chris Christie has exchanged his reputation as a tough-talking and effective conservative governor for that of a shrill and scandal-prone politician who scrapped his own principles and kowtowed to Donald Trump in a futile attempt to gain favor. On his last day in office—Christie’s Democratic successor, Phil Murphy, is sworn in today—it’s worth asking what happened.
It’s hard to overstate the optimism with which conservatives viewed the Chris Christie of the years 2010 to 2013. When the former federal prosecutor was elected governor in 2009, he faced a state budget deficit of over $2 billion—partly the result of the recession, partly of the New Jersey Democratic establishment’s spend-everything-now philosophy. Christie refused to raise taxes, aggressively exercised his veto, and had balanced the budget by 2011. He took on out-of-control state pensions and, unlike many governors who campaign on the issue but fail to accomplish anything, signed a series of reform bills that likely averted a fiscal apocalypse in the state. Christie’s 2011 speech to the American Enterprise Institute was the work of a principled and articulate conservative who grasped the dangers of unchecked entitlement spending. “If we’re not honest about these things,” he said, “on the state level about pensions and benefits and on the federal level about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we are on the path to ruin.”
He repeatedly fought the New Jersey teachers union over tax increases and the tenure system. Some of these confrontations were captured on video and posted on YouTube; they revealed a governor who understood the issue and wasn’t afraid to push back, hard. The videos went viral.
Christie’s portly stature was highly unusual in an age of svelte politicians, but he disarmed skeptics by poking fun at himself—he famously ate a donut on David Letterman’s show. His weight was part of his unorthodox brand. So popular was he in 2011 and 2012, that GOP mega-donors and rank-and-file Republicans both begged him to challenge Mitt Romney for the 2012 presidential nomination. He countered that he simply wasn’t ready to be president. But the time was right: Republicans in 2012 wanted a fighter.
The governor’s second term was plagued by an event that occurred just before his landslide re-election: the closure of lanes at the George Washington Bridge. The closures were carried out as Jersey-style payback for Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich’s criticisms of Christie during the gubernatorial campaign. Christie repeatedly and vehemently denied involvement, but as senior members of his staff succumbed one-by-one to federal indictments, his denials rang hollow.
Second terms are often marred by scandal and partisan rancor, and this was true of Christie’s. “Bridgegate” occupied his administration’s attention and energies; his opponents in the state’s media and legislature saw weakness and capitalized at every turn. In 2013, the governor abandoned his convictions about entitlement reform and embraced Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. He feigned offense at anyone who accused him of inconsistency. Medicaid expansion, he said, bizarrely in light of his earlier commitments, was “the smart thing to do for our fiscal and public health.”
When Christie did run for president in 2016, his approval ratings hovered in the 30s and his curtness had begun sounding like smug defensiveness. He got nowhere. In a crowded field in which Donald Trump grabbed all the attention, Christie couldn’t get out of the single digits. Rather than gracefully bowing out and focusing on the state he led, he endorsed Trump, a man he had claimed repeatedly to be ill-suited for the presidency and who was the only Republican candidate who rejected calls for reforming federal entitlement spending. Perhaps Christie expected a plum cabinet post for the endorsement. He got nothing—unless you count the chairmanship of the Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission.
By the end of his second term, Christie seemed almost trying to be portrayed as an entitled goon. He refused to cancel a 2017 family vacation to Island Beach State Park even though it had been closed as a result of a government shutdown. It was the July 4 weekend and taxpaying New Jerseyans weren’t permitted to visit the public beach, but there was Governor Christie being photographed sunbathing amid frolicking family members. Only contempt for voters could explain such a stunt. His approval rating dropped to an unheard-of 15 percent.
Chris Christie’s problem isn’t arrogance. He is arrogant and he is a bully. But these have never been disqualifying traits in politics. No; his problem was timing. Christie assumed that beating a new Democratic opponent in 2016 would be easier than beating an incumbent Barack Obama in 2012. He was wrong. If he had dropped his faux-humility and run when he was on top, those disaffected Republican primary voters who nominated Donald Trump in 2016 might have found what they were looking for in 2012: a blunt Northeastern pugilist willing to offend the right people for mostly the right reasons. As it turned out, they had to wait four years—and wound up with a blunt Northeastern pugilist willing to offend everybody for any reason at all.
