Thanks to a strong and unexpected performance today, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is likely to survive the “bridgegate” traffic-blocking scandal. He took a risk that few political or business leaders caught in a scandal could even imagine, holding a two-hour, unscripted press conference to take all questions on the subject.
The last time we’d seen anything like this was the 1984 presidential campaign, when democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro held a marathon press conference about her husband’s real estate business. Her performance, while good, didn’t benefit her much. She was not that well known at the time, which allowed the scandal to remain imprinted in he minds of voters.
Gov. Christie, by contrast, is very well known, was just re-elected in a landslide, and used today’s performance to reinforce what he’s known for.
Everything we saw from him at today’s news conference was consistent with the personal he has built – a blunt, plain-spoken guy who’s not afraid every now and then to break a few legs, er, I mean eggs! The anti-politician was on full display today, and before a nationwide audience, too.
Ron Paul, Marco Rubio and other Republican presidential hopefuls should be very worried by what they saw today. Here was a rival in just about the most difficult setting imaginable – facing a hostile press for nearly two hours over the biggest scandal of his career – and he aced it. He will own Iowa town halls and New Hampshire debates.
Unless, of course, the scandal widens. If evidence emerges to contradict Christie’s account, he will be in much deeper trouble. Investigations by the Department of Justice, the New Jersey legislature will be working hard to do just that.
Of course, it didn’t have to be this way. Gov. Christie’s chief of staff should have been all over this issue weeks ago, getting all the facts and taking charge. Gov. Christie would have been in a stronger position if he had taken the lead in revealing the facts in the first place.
It is hard to believe that his senior staff would not have brought this to his attention before it broke in the Bergen Record yesterday. But Gov Christie has drawn the line and said he did not know.
We’ll see what happens in the weeks to come, but we might have seen the peak in the media frenzy around this scandal. If so, those supporting Gov. Christie’s presidential aspirations can take comfort from the fact that he was tested early in the “campaign” and survived.