Candidate Quality Might Matter, Chris Christie Edition

A CNN poll conducted from January 31st to February 2nd found that Hillary Clinton led five named Republican candidates by amounts ranging from fifteen points to twenty points. That kind of makes it look like, if Hillary runs, she'll be President (given that her lead in the Democratic primary is big enough that, were her own polling figure replaced by her margin over her closest competitor, she would still be in better shape than she was at this point in the 2008 cycle), though obviously it's early and this is just one poll. But there's an interesting comparison with the last incarnation of this same poll, conducted from December 16th to 19th of 2013. In that poll, Hillary's largest lead over these same five men was twenty-one points, but her smallest lead was... negative two points. It looks, in other words, like the 2016 Presidential landscape changed dramatically over those six weeks. Except the thing is, virtually none of the numbers moved. The absolute difference between the December margin and the Groundhog Day margin for the five match-ups were one point, two points, five points, seven points, and... eighteen points. Okay, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan are doing a bit worse now than they were a couple months ago, but the story here is Chris Christie, who has spent those six weeks imploding like a black hole from which no political ambition can escape. And this, I think, is an interesting little case study for the political science concept that candidate quality is not an important variable in Presidential elections, that only the so-called "fundamentals" matter.

At first glance, the most obvious conclusion is that the Christie example strongly suggests that candidate quality does matter. In December, the Democrats and the Republicans had an equal number of high-quality candidates seen as serious contenders for the nomination, one. The match-up between the two of them suggested that the election could be something like a toss-up. Now, the Democrats outnumber the Republicans in quality candidates one-zip, and the poll suggests that the Republicans are in line to get slaughtered. Plus or minus one quality candidate could, it appears, alter American politics for the next decade more or less single-handedly. Thank you, Mayor of Fort Lee, in other words. And I think, on a certain level, this conclusion is absolutely correct. Candidate quality matters, a lot. Ask Senators Coons, Donnelly, Bennett, McCaskill, and Reid.

But I think there's an extra level of subtlety, and in the end this Christie datum suggests a refinement, albeit a substantial one, rather than a rejection of the idea that candidate quality is irrelevant.

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.

Why I Voted For Rush Holt

Earlier today I voted in the New Jersey Democratic Party primary election for the upcoming special election to the Senate seat vacated by the death of best-New-Jersey-politician-ever Frank Lautenberg. I voted for Rush Holt, who is currently my Congressman. Rush Holt is not going to win; the latest poll had him at 15%, competitive for second place with Rep. Frank Pallone (17%) but miles behind Newark Mayor Cory Booker who's at 54%. In a couple of months Booker will face Republican Steve Lonegan (who was Tea Party before it was cool) in the general election, and I will happily vote for him. I like Cory Booker. But I didn't vote for him, and I wish he weren't going to win. Here's why.

Chris Christie: Actually That Popular, Or Running the George Bush Play?

No, not that George Bush. His father. The point is this PublicPolicyPolling survey, which shows Christie creaming anyone the Democrats could run against him, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Booker trails by 14 points, while Richard Codey, Steve Sweeney, and Barbara Buono, of whom I've never heard, trail by 22, 27, and 40 points. Bruce Springsteen even trails by 36 points, despite himself being quite popular. The reason is that Christie himself is very popular, with a 67%/25% approval rating, including a 56%/32% approval rating among, uh, Democrats. So it looks like I'm stuck with my odious Governor for another four years, right? (Yeah, I'm in the 25% of disapprovers.)

That's probably correct. However, there's a real chance, I think, that Christie's current popularity is basically a bump from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and that it could fade substantially over the next year. New Jersey is, after all, a blue state, and during a campaign it should be pretty hard for Christie to retain his popularity with Democrats. If, that is, a strong candidate could be found to run against him. That's why I invoke George H.W. Bush as a model: during 1991, his approval ratings were so strong that no prominent Democrat wanted to challenge him, but when diamond-in-the-rough Bill Clinton actually ran the campaign, he found Bush's strength dissipating and the incumbent highly vulnerable. I sort of think the 1992 campaign should stand as a cautionary tale to ambitious politicians, telling them not to let outlandish popularity numbers for the incumbent in the wake of some Event from which they've received substantial good press scare them away.

But, in this case, I imagine the relevant parties won't listen. With the presumptively-going-to-open-up Senate seat in 2014, it just doesn't make sense as the place to direct your efforts, if you're a Democratic prospect looking for higher office. Which means that we'll probably end up having to nominate some sacrificial lamb-type candidate, who'll run a bit of a mediocre campaign and get slaughtered. Oh well.

Booker vs. Christie: Battle of the Disaster-Relief Kings

There has long been a sense that Cory Booker, Democratic Mayor of Newark and generally awesome dude, would be the best candidate to challenge Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie. Among Booker's many awesome traits is the way he basically seems to turn into a superhero whenever there's a storm in town. He'll go around rescuing people from burning buildings or shoveling people's sidewalks after a snowstorm or, most recently, inviting people who had lost power as a result of Hurricane Sandy over to his house, which still had power.

Of course, another politician who has performed brilliantly during this storm has been Chris Christie, who has among other things very enjoyably spurned Mitt Romney's efforts to come into New Jersey for some nice disaster-porn photo-ops while fulsomely praising the incumbent, um, Democratic President. So if we do get Christie vs. Booker in 2013, it'll be one disaster-relieving candidate against another.

Now, I have to admit that Christie appears to have done a good job with this storm, and deserves credit for that. In fact I think there's a substantial amount of evidence that, unlike many of his fellow Republicans, he actually is interested in governing, not just in ruling. The fact remains, however, that he has some really awful ideas about how to govern. In fact, though it's not exactly on-topic for a 2013 gubernatorial re-election campaign, it'd be nice if someone would ask him whether he agrees with Romney about cutting FEMA or devolving it to the states. He certainly loves him some budget-cutting in general.

So, as someone devoted to the cause of a Christie defeat in 2013, let me just say this: yes, Christie handled this storm well, but remember who his opponent will (hopefully) be. It's not like Cory Booker wouldn't know how to kick some hurricane ass himself. And unlike Christie, he's not wicked or corrupt in general. Booker '13!

You've Got It Backwards, Gov. Christie

Of the marriage-equality bill working its way through the New Jersey state legislature, my odious Governor Chris Christie, Republican, said the following:

"I don’t think there’s anything necessarily so special about this particular issue that it must be handled by a Legislature."

This was in the context of arguing for a referendum on gay marriage, rather than just passing the bill outright. But note that this is precisely backwards. Legislatures are not councils of experts upon whose intervention we depend when the issue is too complex or misunderstood or, you know, important to let the people decide it for themselves. Legislatures are the solution to the problems posed by the overwhelming desire of most people not to spend all their time thinking about public policy concerns. They pick a group of people whom they trust (in theory, at least) to study the issues and render informed decisions which reflect the interests of the people themselves, so that most of us can just lead our normal lives. Some people then think that on certain issues of particular importance or centrality, particularly though not exclusively things of constitutional stature, it's not enough just to let the delegated powers of the legislature decide, and that we should ask the people directly. Some people might think it a shame that we allow legislatures to decide these things in the first place, as Rousseau did. But there's no world in which the more important, or "special" in Christie's terminology, an issue is, the more we ought to have it decided by a legislature. The way it works is that issues to be decided by the people are more important than issues to be decided by the legislature, which are in turn more important than issues to be decided by unelected government officials and bureaucracies.

There are a lot of reasons not to like Governor Christie, and not to like this recent statement of his, of which this is a fairly minor one. Still, it reflects a profound lack of understanding of very basic political theory, and that just kind of pisses me off.