Chris Christie, 2020—Should he live that long

One of the glories of America is that you can have an ego as big as Manhattan and live in New Jersey.

Writing about the Republican convention, in the Fashion and Style section of the Sunday Times, Mark Leibovich details Chris Christie’s second-biggest weight problem—being constantly pestered to run for president.

“People started asking Mr. Christie to run for president. You might remember this, and in case you did not, Mr. Christie was not shy about providing refresher courses last week, usually in the form of ostentatious exasperation at how no one took his denials of interest in seeking the presidency seriously.

“‘After the 87th time I said I wasn’t running for president, they finally believed me,’ Mr. Christie told the delegates of South Carolina—a state that, Mr. Christie points out, had its own effort to draft Mr. Christie into the presidential race last year.”

Leibovich continues grimly:

“Now two days after his keynote, he is still getting questions about it, specifically the 'all about Chris' critique. 'I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my future will always be speculated about,' Mr. Christie said as sweat glistened from his forehead. 'Even if Mitt Romney wins on Nov. 6, as I expect him to, people will start speculating about 2020 then, O.K.?'”

Seems we have to follow the fashion and style sections as well as the late-night comedy shows to appreciate, before it’s too late, who in politics is of sound mind and who is a delusional egomaniac. 

Danielle Smith—North America’s raising conservative star

As a billion dollars gears up to get conservatives excited about Mitt Romney, Alberta, Canada, is about to launch Daniel Smith—and remind everyone that Romney is a timid bore.

Calgary’s Danielle Smith is only a smart 41-year-old troublemaker who doesn’t claim we’re going to hell in a hand basket or that moderate elites are poisoning our minds. Nevertheless, on the 23rd of April, she’s likely to crush the most powerful, longest-standing mainstream conservative government in North America.

In only 3 years, Cassias’s sister with the nice smile organized the Wildrose Party of Alberta and now is about to throw a 41-year-old Progressive Conservative government out of power. Last night’s leader’s debate did nothing to slow her insolent campaign.

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/wildrose-comes-out-on-top-after-alberta-leaders-debate/article2400783/

In the debate, the leader of the New Democrats played the “I’m-at-least-a-clean-Canadian” card by saying, “Danielle, this is Alberta, not Alabama.”

Leave it to Fox News to decide which has the star appeal. However, if she beats the ruthless 11 straight election winning Alberta Progressive Conservative machine, Danielle Smith, not Sarah Palin or Chris Christie, will be the most accomplished anti-establishment conservative winner in North America.

If in 4 years from now, she was a competent governor of a western American state, she’d be a promising national contender.

Republican advantage: the “strongman” presidency

Republicans have almost totally abandoned their fear campaign against the embattled Barack Obama. Their street philosophers and Tea Party freedom-fighters are losing their momentum. Every day, we hear less about the constitution and more and more about how to be a boss.

Republican strategists and fundraisers are not simply running away from the shrillest of the Republican candidates for president. Rather, they’re looking eagerly for a demonstrably muscular candidate who can run against a weak president—a president every bit as American and as unforgivably ineffectual as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

Michael Goodwin wrote this in the New York Post:

“His is a vision best described as pragmatic idealism. He is about taking direct and forceful action without ever losing sight of the big picture.

“As he said in his stirring speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, “The rule for effective government is simple: When you see a problem, you fix it.”

“Later, he added, “You can’t wait for someone else to do it when you sit in the Oval Office.”

Click on: www.nypost.com/p/news/local/inside_the_passion_of_the_christie_WhLv56zPRIjLxh4DCAqdzN#ixzz1ZdFH2qDZ

Without the reference to the Reagan Library, this encomium to Governor Chris Christie could have been written by several equally shrewd columnists in the New York Times, in 2008, about Barack Obama.

Obama, who also talks to himself as well as the lowest common denominator, could have easily said every bit of it—only adding that a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress will be required as well.

Today, Obama doesn’t scare anyone—in America. But he isn’t called a “pragmatic idealist” because Republicans won’t let him get anything big done. 

Here’s the cruel beauty of a Christie candidacy: with a non-ideological tough guy as the star candidate for the presidential nomination, Republicans in Congress, in the shadows, can continue to block Obama’s domestic initiatives. (Conversely, without the distracting excitement of Christie, every week of paralysis in Congress further highlights Republican legislators as obstructionists.)

Nevertheless, whatever the New Jersey governor does, the Democrats are left with a dangerous problem: Americans are desperate for effective leadership, but they see that an eminently level-headed Democrat can’t get much done.

Probably millions of independent voters who support Obama’s program today would drop him now for another so-called effective president like Ronald Reagan.

He can’t win and stay the same. Obama’s leadership potential can’t be re-imagined without a clear legislative win on jobs and the economy this fall or without, shall we say, a rather vicious and winning campaign against the re-election of an obstructionist Republican Congress next fall.

It can be argued that the capacity of the two-party system to express what a majority of Americans want is at stake. The constitution doesn’t insist that only center-right presidents can lead. Nevertheless, a sane case can be made that that’s exactly what a decisive faction in the US Congress believes.

Remember, even president George Bush’s economic emergency legislation was torpedoed by the same faction (then without a brand name) when the financial system nearly collapsed in September 2008.

There is a pattern of recklessness that only the voters can break. There are many things Democrats may not understand about American exceptionalism. However, they alone, as a national party in Washington, still seem to know when to cooperate with a pragmatic president—Republican or Democrat—when the nation’s economy is in peril. 

Mitch Daniels’ enlightening presidential bid

Flashing across the heavens Governor Mitch Daniel’s putative campaign for the Republican presidential nomination cast a valuable light of the state of mind of the GOP. The nature of its climax was funny as well.

The modern national Republican Party is not so much ideological as it is insistent that each election cycle be dominated by one great challenge—a single threat to America that steels the enlightened and exposes the mediocrity of their opponents. In 2008, in office, they said it was security; in 2010, out of office, it was personal liberty; in 2012, half in power and half out, it will be their exceptional determination to tackle America’s public debt.

On this chosen issue, Mitch Daniel’s would have been a natural: he’s cut spending programs and is reported to be haunted by the issue. Indeed, in a major speech to a Washington conference of conservative activists he called America’s public debt the new “red menace.” His lack of charisma and slick downtown charm makes his most extravagant statement sound plausible; boring really, like homilies carved in wood above family cottage mantels.

He has already influenced American history. As “The Blade”, George Bush’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget until June 2003, Daniel’s obvious intelligence and gravitas was effectively brought to bear to assure moderate Republicans and Democrats that both across the board personal tax cuts and the invasion of Iraqi were affordable.

Every great menace, of course, is humbled by extenuating circumstances. So, now we learn that Daniel’s dedication to slaying the “red menace” doesn’t override family politics:

“In the end, I was able to resolve every competing consideration but one,” Mr. Daniels wrote in an overnight e-mail to campaign supporters. “The interests and wishes of my family is the most important consideration of all.

“Our family constitution gives a veto to the women’s caucus, and there is no override provision.”

Closing on the big picture—those persistent looming clouds on the horizon—he offered to do whatever he can as a “little known” governor of a Midwest state to “restore the Republic.”

We shouldn’t be too picky about “I can’t run” statements. Besides, this is the first time Daniels has turned down a decent chance to be President; it’s not the kind of statement one bothers to prepare and edit well in advance. However, his message—and its universal acceptance—are amusing and make one wonder.

What did the “women’s caucus” think he had been up to over the last few months? And why is its veto not subject to appeal? New Jersey Governor Christie can say “no” in a newsy way, day after day, and will continue to be asked again and again.

But, above all, why all the extravagant heroic language about another “red menace”? The national debt, it turns out, isn’t big enough to disrupt Governor Daniels’ household. Apparently, no one needs to be drafted or taxes increased to deter national bankruptcy. Maybe, other Republicans and nervous moderates should take a deep breath as well. America may not need another Paul Revere to disrupt family time running around telling us that the Reds are coming.

Clearly, one competent Republican has discovered that he can’t use the debt menace to chase all his other concerns off the table. This is probably a healthy development. After all, isn’t America still strong enough to manage its way out of a fiscal mess that men and women like Daniels—on both sides of the aisle—managed America into in the first place?