The Christie Contradiction

My Governor says he is not running for President. 

I believe him. I really do.

I believe him when he says “I’m not ready.” I disagree with him, but I believe him.

I believe him when he says,“You have to feel in your heart and mind you’re ready for the presidency. I’m not stupid. I see the opportunity. That’s not the reason to run.” I agree with him that simply because there is an opportunity is not reason enough to run.

But there is a contradiction here: Almost every time Chris Christie opens his mouth and speaks - whether from the Clerk’s podium in the chamber of the General Assembly where he is delivering a budget address or at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC - he reminds us how desperately America needs him to be in the White House. Not later, now. As soon as he can get there.

I hear the Governor say while discussing the depths of New Jersey’s fiscal woes in Washington at AEI, “This is a problem that took a decade to develop and it's going to take longer than a year for us to fix. Fiscal discipline is extraordinarily important not just for New Jersey but for America.”

Then I think to myself, “Well shouldn’t we get started right now on America?” How much deeper is the federal fiscal hole going to be after four more years of fiscal insanity in Washington? Is it a fissure from which we will ever be able to climb? 

And for those of you who think that we have somehow constructed a levee to hold back the flood of red ink simply because we elected a few Republican members of Congress who talked a good game in the previous election, I want to remind you what happened the last time they were in charge. In fact let me remind you of what happened just a few weeks ago when it took a mini-revolt by Tea Party members in the House Republican Caucus to hold the Leadership to the puny $100 billion spending cut promise made just a few months earlier.

Then Governor Christie explains in plain English to us that “the way we used to think about politics and unfortunately the way I fear they're thinking about politics still in Washington ... says lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election.” And a lot of Americans find that refreshing. Quite frankly, I find it sad. I am saddened by the fact that so many Americans have come to expect so little from our elected leadership. Shouldn’t that be the norm - or “The New Normal” as the Governor has described New Jersey? But I have no hope that the coming Presidential election will give us anything other than the same old deceptions without Chris in the race. And his frank way of speaking has given that hope to many others.

I listened as Chris Christie said, “I hear people saying, we're going too fast, we're going too fast. We need to slow down a little bit. I hear the same thing in New Jersey.” And he adds, “Leadership today in America has to be about doing the big things and being courageous.”

And then I remember what former US House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt explained to me a few years ago, “Congress cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. It is not built that way.” So I get frustrated because I agree with Christie that there are so many “big things” we need to get done in America and I have no hope they will get done and he tells me I have to wait six more years, until Inauguration day 2017, before we even begin the work.

I am sorry Governor. I do not believe America can wait, or what will be left of it. That is why I will continue to beg, plead and coax Americans to come to www.draftchristie2012.com and add their names to the thousands of us who believe your time is now. As I have said before, “If you were volunteering for the job, we would not need a draft, now would we?”