What Could Have Been

Republican presidential candidate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks at a town hall held at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor & Museum Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, in Le Mars, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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Watching the last week of the presidential campaign, I’m struck by a wistful, ‘What could have been?’

Granted, as I’ve argued elsewhere, I have serious doubts that Chris Christie’s personality could ever really sell outside the New York tri-state area. We love it but it’s an acquired taste. Like the Australians like that horrific Vegemite stuff. There’s no accounting for taste. But setting that aside, what if he had not been effectively implicated in perhaps the most super-sized, clownish – if not the most serious – abuse of power in American history, i.e., BridgeGate. And no, if you’re keeping score at home, being exonerated by an investigation conducted by your own lawyer does not count.

In any case, as we can now see, the GOP primary has one basic divide. And it’s not really ideological. It’s between governors with real governing experience, some level of pragmatism and some level of policy knowledge. They’re on one side. Then you have the senatorial/plutocrat wing which is most distinguished by anger issues and/or personality disorders and a range of plans to either intern, ban or just beat up on Muslims and other minority groups.

So if you had a Venn Diagram, you would have one circle with Trump, Cruz, Rubio and others and another with Jeb and Kasich.

But I think there’d only be one guy in the overlap zone: Chris Christie.

Former US Attorney, two term governor, who has conspicuously stood against Islamophobia. And yet, definitely belligerent, makes real stabs at threatening to beat up possible general election opponents and as Austin Powers might have put it, generally ill-tempered.

Whether the ideological side would be resolved, I don’t know. There is the usually fatal Obama hug. And there is only so conservative a blue state governor can be, let alone a senator whose only fully required job is to talk and be badass on Fox News. But be honest, Chrisitie is the only guy who brings together the governing wing with the impulse control deficit wing.

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