Christie’sRhetoric Does Not Match Reality

The following Op-Ed was written by Josh Henne and appeared in yesterday's The Record:



GOVERNOR Christie devotes a lot of time talking about a “Jersey Comeback.” But the truth is more like an impressionist painting by Monet or Seurat. From a distance, it seems as if things make sense … but the closer you get, the more you realize the dots don’t seem to connect.

When Christie goes on the cable news circuit or beats his chest to sympathetic audiences in far-off states, he paints a vivid picture. But in New Jersey, folks know the rosy rhetoric isn’t matching reality.

Whenever I hear beltway talking heads gush about Christie, I feel like yelling at the screen: “You’re not from New Jersey. You have no clue what you’re talking about.”

You aren’t sitting in traffic outside the Lincoln Tunnel or on a delayed train coming into Penn Station because Christie canceled the bipartisan-backed ARC tunnel linkage to Manhattan. Your kids’ teachers aren’t the ones being used as a political piñata to score points. Nor did your children lose out on $400 million in Race to the Top funding because your governor bungled the application.

Your air, land and water won’t be filthier because Christie is allowing corporate polluters to rewrite the rules via Department of Environmental Protection waivers. You aren’t living in a state where one out of every 12 mortgages is in foreclosure, and whose business climate has landed the state 41st out of 50. And you don’t have a governor who vetoed women’s health four times at $7.5 million a pop maintaining the money wasn’t there, while giving $261 million in bailout money to casino moguls.

Christie’s boosters point to popularity in the polls as if it gives him a mandate to run roughshod. But these same folks should realize that in 1997, Gov. Christie Whitman came within a whisker of losing to a completely unknown Jim McGreevey a mere year after polls had her at 62 percent.

This Christie’s numbers are due more to dumping millions of unanswered dollars into television advertising than actual ability to govern.

Face-saving exit
Every time Christie claims he doesn’t want to run for national office, I immediately think of Br’er Rabbit begging Br’er Fox not to throw him in the briar patch. It should come as no surprise that Christie relished being in the mix as Romney’s potential running mate, not just to feed his ego, but also because the opportunity would provide a face-saving exit valve from a state whose residents know the true story.

Just last month, unemployment spiked nearly half a point to 9.6 percent – the most severe monthly increase since 2009 and the largest disparity from the national average since 1978.

In fact, underemployment stands at 15.5 percent. For Christie, success is measured in increments of attention rather than measurable improvements for his constituents. Recently, the governor’s staff squawked about hitting 5 million YouTube hits, as if that’s a measure of success. Viral videos, retweets and Facebook “likes” are not the numbers that matter to New Jersey residents.

The real stats are grisly in the Garden State. Chronically lagging the nation when it comes to unemployment, allowing corporate polluters to rewrite environmental regulations and borrowing money the state doesn’t have to subsidize a tax cut for multimillionaires – that’s Christie’s New Jersey. We have a state economy that ranks 47th in the nation and are facing a property tax rate jump of 20 percent – those numbers mean something.

Now that the fantasy of his vaunted “comeback” is crashing down around him in the face of actual facts, Christie is acting like a man with one foot out the door. Clearly, the governor is a gifted politician with a calculating mind for campaign strategy. So when he vetoes funding for women’s health, nursing homes, after-school programs and repairs at the Marcellus Street Bridge in voter-rich Bergen County a mere year before Election Day, one has to wonder if Christie’s head is in the game … or if he even still holds designs on standing for reelection.

Seeing enemies
Christie is acting downright Nixonian in seeing enemies lurking around every corner. At first it was Democratic legislators bearing the brunt of his anger — which is to be expected in politics. Today, he sees adversaries everywhere: in the classroom, at press events, even on the boardwalk.

With each escalating incident, Christie repeats himself – first as tragedy, then as farce. Maybe this is all just a brilliant smokescreen designed to divert attention from his failures or to set himself up for a job in the entertainment industry.

Christie may skip town before the piper comes to make him pay for his failures. It’s New Jersey’s taxpayers and families who are going to be left holding the bag.

Joshua Henne is a co-founder of White Horse Strategies, a New Jersey-based political consulting firm, and is a spokesman for One New Jersey.