Chris Christie, the Hatchet Man That Could Have Been

By Jim Geraghty

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

We’ll never know precisely what went through New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s mind in the moments before he took the stage Tuesday night. But one can’t help but think he wanted to show that he would have made a much better running mate for Donald Trump than Mike Pence.

He certainly remains one of the toughest attack dogs in the Republican party. It’s not often a convention speaker gets a crowd of delegates to chant “LOCK HER UP!” Christie bit into his role with gusto, inviting delegates to “do something fun tonight,” to “hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her performance and her character,” and asking the delegates to decide whether she was “guilty, or not guilty.”

Delegates were enthralled as Christie listed parts of the world “infected by her flawed judgment” — from the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya to the lame hashtag campaign against Boko Haram to a reference to Syrian dictator Bashir Assad as “a reformer” to her role in beginning the Iran negotiations to coddling the Castro brothers in Cuba. After each prosecutorial case, the delegates gleefully answered, “GUILTY!” and then chanted “LOCK HER UP!”

The media, which had painted Christie as a perpetually humiliated lackey ever since he endorsed Trump, had to give credit where it was due. The Washington Post’s Paul Rucker called Christie’s speech “a master class on how to prosecute a political opponent.” Salina Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review praised his “gripping case to the American people on Clinton’s judgment.”

It was a little rich to watch Christie hit Clinton for being too kind to Russia, considering Trump’s warm words for Vladimir Putin, and for being too kind to brutal mass-murderer Assad when Trump has stated that the United States has “bigger problems than Assad.” But even Trump-skeptic conservative writers saluted Christie’s relish for his task of tearing apart Clinton’s record as secretary of state.

“Effective and energized the room,” concluded Guy Benson of Townhall. CNN’s Mary Katharine Ham tweeted, “Trump should take notes from Christie on staying on message.” Eric Fehrnstrom, formerly a senior aide to Mitt Romney, said Christie was “throwing serious heat, equivalent to a pitcher hitting 100 mph.”

Praise from anyone on the Romney team was hardly a given tonight.

Four years ago, Christie had the plum role of giving the keynote address at the GOP convention in Tampa. He was indisputably one of the party’s rising stars. He stepped onto the stage to raucous applause, maybe the apex of his political career. And then everything started going terribly, terribly wrong.

In 2012, what the delegates before him and viewers at home didn’t know was that moments earlier Christie had been furiously fighting with the convention director over whether a three-minute video introducing Christie needed to be cut for time constraints. The argument grew more heated until Christie asked a member of the production team “if he had ever heard anyone say ‘f***’ on live television, because that’s what he was about to do if the video didn’t run.”

The director relented in the face of Christie’s threat. The video ran, and then Christie told the national audience a great deal about himself and not so much about nominee Mitt Romney. Christie finished 120 sentences in his speech, discussing his childhood, record as governor, and philosophy, before mentioning “our nominee.”

Tuesday night, Christie made sure he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. In his opening words, he praised Trump as “not only a strong leader, but a genuine caring and decent person.”

Christie’s other major role in the 2012 drama came when he warmly received President Obama in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy in the campaign’s final week. Analysts dispute whether the storm really changed the election’s outcome, but in the eyes of many conservatives, Christie gave Obama effusive praise when the president needed it most. Christie also refused to appear with Romney afterwards, adding fuel to the fire of those arguing that the New Jersey governor was an unreliable free agent who put his own interests first.

The following year brought the Bridgegate scandal, a subject of obsessive coverage for MSNBC and the New Jersey media. Christie’s landslide reelection in 2013 appeared to set him up for a strong presidential bid, and perhaps in a year without Trump and a small army of candidates, Christie might have done better. He had some nice debate moments, and metaphorically body-slammed Marco Rubio in the New Hampshire debate, but in the end he won no delegates.

Two weeks after departing the race, Christie gave Trump help when he needed it most, right after the Houston GOP debate in which Rubio and Ted Cruz had ripped apart any claim Trump had to being a conservative. Never mind that Christie had once boasted that he alone among Republicans was willing to be bold and specific on entitlement reform, and Trump opposes most GOP proposals for entitlement reform. Never mind that Christie had said that nominating Trump “could wind up turning over the White House to Hillary Clinton for four more years,” or that Trump was “acting like a child” when he skipped the Iowa debate, or that Trump’s immigration plan was “just too simplistic,” or that Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration to the U.S. was “the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Trump looked like a winner, and Christie — who says he’s been friends with Trump for more than a dozen years — wanted to be allied with a winner.

But the relationship between Trump and Christie never seemed based upon mutual warmth. After the Super Tuesday press conference, Christie’s posture and visage were so awkward he later had to declare, “No, I wasn’t being held hostage.” Later, when Trump needed to attack John Kasich, he mocked the Ohio governor for being away from his state so often. “He’s living in New Hampshire [Kasich was there] . . . even more than Chris Christie,” Trump declared, turning around and smiling at Christie. There was even an unconfirmed report that Trump had Christie fetch his McDonald’s orders. (Yes, Trump eats McDonald’s.)

Christie clearly hoped he would be selected as Trump’s running mate; he reportedly made one last sales pitch to Trump Thursday night, even though Mike Pence’s name had already leaked as the choice.

Maybe tonight Donald Trump is still wondering about that choice. With his entire speech an oratory indictment, Christie might as well have ended with a formal application to be Trump’s nominee to be attorney general.