Christie and the IRS - WSJ.com
Jan. 9, 2014
Contrast the Governor's contrition with Obama's lack thereof.
Now that we have your attention, allow us to explain. Governor Chris Christie apologized to New Jersey on Thursday for aides who closed traffic lanes in order to punish a Democratic mayor, and he fired a deputy chief of staff. We mention the IRS because Mr. Christie's contrition contrasts so sharply with President Obama's handling of the tax agency's abuse of political opponents and his reluctance to fire anyone other than a military general for anything.
In his long press conference in Trenton, Mr. Christie was properly contrite, saying he had been "lied to" by the senior aide he proceeded to fire. He also said he is withdrawing his support for his former campaign manager to run the state Republican Party because the man had shown "callous and indifferent" behavior toward the people inconvenienced by the traffic-lane closures. If Mr. Christie really didn't know about this cheap exercise in political payback, and nothing new emerges, the incident shouldn't interfere with the Governor's expected presidential run.
That doesn't mean Mr. Christie shouldn't learn from the experience. One lesson is that he's going to have to upgrade the quality of his advisers as he moves onto the national scene. The traffic-lane-as-vendetta ploy is so dumb and petty that anyone who would attempt it isn't ready for prime time. Never mind putting it in email.
Mitt Romney was supposed to be a crack manager, but he surrounded himself with campaign lightweights and he suffered for it. One of Mr. Christie's selling points for the White House will be that he is an executive who has run a sizable state, so the media will descend on Trenton even more than it did on Wasilla, Alaska, for Sarah Palin. Better to clean out the hack loyalists now.
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