Words Cannot Express How Much I Love the Chris Christie Scandal

Chris Christie is one of the very, very few Republicans who scares me a little bit for 2016. Generally their candidates suffer from the fact that their party's entire platform is hideously unpopular, particularly as this leads prominent Republicans toward some combination of craziness, idiocy, or dishonesty. Christie, however, has shown a bit of an interest in actual governance, and has kind of a lingering halo from his genuinely good handling of Hurricane Sandy. He polled categorically better against Hillary Clinton than just about any other prominent contender for the Republican nomination, and is the only person I've seen leading her in any national polls. I've always been skeptical he could survive the primary, particularly because of that time he actually literally hugged Obama (the attack ad writes itself; it's just a .gif of that moment, on a loop). But hey, we were all skeptical that Romney could survive a primary. Nothing was impossible, and if he could get nominated, Christie stood to be the most formidable possible opponent. Oh, and not only is Christie the scariest 2016 Republican contender around, he's also my home state's governor. For another four years. Ugh.

Imagine my delight, then, as it has transpired that his office deliberately engineered a traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey to punish its mayor for endorsing his sacrificial lamb of an opponent, Barbara Buono.

The scandal's been brewing for a while, but only recently has there been clear proof that (a) members of his inner circle were involved, and (b) it most definitely was not a traffic study, but rather a very deliberate infliction of pain on innocent voters (with almost maniacal levels of indifference) as political payback. So now it's a proper scandal, one that will consume at least a couple of media cycles and could well do lasting damage to his political fortunes. Obviously people say that a lot of things will be of lasting political impact when they happen, and they are almost always wrong. There are some reasons, however, to think this time we might be right.


For one thing, it's basically a five out of five on Nate Silver's EMPSCAT test for the severity of political scandals:

• 1. Can the scandal be reduced to a one-sentence soundbyte (but not easily refuted/denied with a one-sentence soundbyte)? Yes, yes it can. "Time for Fort Lee to have some traffic problems." Also, "They are the children of Buono voters." The refutation, from Christie's point of view, is at best a kind of "the buck stopped somewhere over there" thing, which is always a pretty lame defense.
• 2. Does the scandal cut against a core element of the candidate's brand? Not... exactly, but this isn't a complete loss. Christie's brand is definitely not that of a nice guy, a gentleman, whatever. But he does try to present his high-tempered bluster as no-nonsense, straight-shooting tough talk, fitting in with his presentation of himself as a corruption-buster. This undercuts that entirely. Also, the scandal can be forgiven for falling a bit short on this point because of how much it aces the next one.
• 3. Does the scandal reify/reinforce/"prove" a core negative perception about the candidate, particularly one that had henceforth been difficult to articulate (but not one that has become so entrenched that little further damage can be done)? Like I said. This is a bull's eye. If there's one word that people who don't like Chris Christie have always used to describe him, it's "bully." This is precisely the behavior of a bully. And while those of us who don't like him have always known he's a bully (see his rampant politicization of his U.S. Attorney's office), a lot of people, especially the media, have tended to buy into the schtick described in part 2, so there's more damage to be done. Bonus points on this one, making up for the somewhat middling performance on the last one.
• 4. Can the scandal readily be employed by the opposition, without their looking hypocritical/petty/politically incorrect, risking retribution, or giving life to a damaging narrative? Oh god yes. Seriously, what the hell looks bad about criticizing him for this? Nothing. I mean, someone could screw it up, probably by bringing Christie's weight into the picture (seriously, guys, it's a trap), but without some kind of unforced error this is the easiest scandal I've ever seen to go after. His office literally inflicted suffering on innocent people for political vengeance. Deliberate bad governance as payback. Nate's original post outlining this test mentioned Hillary Clinton's inability to hammer Obama on the Jeremiah Wright scandal, for fear of being accused of race-baiting. I seriously don't see the possibility for that kind of backfire here. Hammer away, guys.
• 5. Is the media bored, and/or does the story have enough tabloid/shock value to crowd out all other stories? Yeah, I'd say so. Ain't nothin' goin' on right now. Frankly it's been kind of boring, as has all politics for the past year or so except when there's been an acute manufactured crisis. (One of those is upcoming, maybe, which might put an expiration date on this scandal, for now at least.)

That's something like a 5/5, if we let the overflow from part 3 cancel out the slight deficit in part 2. Big effing deal!

But it's more than that. EMPSCAT stands for the Electric Minor Political Scandal Acid Test. It's designed for ordinary political scandals. And here's the thing about ordinary political scandals: they're all bullshit. They're some nonsense about something embarrassing someone the candidate once knew did, or some time they said something slightly inaccurate, or something like that. This is not a bullshit scandal, this is a real scandal. This is someone abusing his power as a public official to hurt his political opponents, through deliberately crappy governance which inflicted pain on ordinary people. Ordinary people, moreover, who were among the constituents of the guy screwing them over. And their children. But all of that was okay because they and their children were also political opponents.

This is, to put it another way, real information about how Chris Christie governs. Information that should rationally make someone less willing to let Chris Christie govern more stuff in the future. And it's not even just confirmation of stuff those of us paying attention already knew. We did know he was a bully who used his official powers for political purposes, particularly from the U.S. Attorney scandals. But simply sabotaging the careers of your opponents is one thing. This was political payback through collateral damage. Hell, the only damage inflicted was collateral damage, as Jon Stewart pointed out in his truly amazing segment last night. The extent of the terrible governance on display here is breathtaking. And Christie's only possible defense is that he wasn't doing it personally, his close advisers were, which might not even be true and in any event is a really terrible defense for the guy at the top of the food chain to make. At best, Chris Christie allowed this kind of thing to happen. That's an actual reason to not want him, say, running the country.That makes this different from other scandals, which are almost always pure embarrassment, signifying nothing about how the person in question would govern.

It seems, therefore, like this could actually stop the Christie '16 campaign before it gets started. And if that happens, clearing the way for someone like Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan or Rand Paul to win the nomination, then it's been a very, very good day.