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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: JohnM who wrote (236999)	11/6/2013 11:53:34 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) of 541957

As I said in a post just up the line, I think the media has gotten Christie all wrong but I have not been able to find the time and the language to work up a post on it. Then I read Charles Stiles' column in this morning's Bergen Record. That does the trick much better than I could. Stiles argues that Christie's governing style is Lyndon Johnson, though he doesn't refer to LBJ specifically. Use the perks of the governor's office to make deals with powerful players on both sides of the aisle. And work to nullify the Dem power players for the next gubernatorial contest. Stiles walks through the specifics of this argument in great detail in this column. I recommend it. Highly. You'll quickly get bored with the list of Democratic power players brought into the Christie camp vis a vis this deal and that. But the picture, the frame, will stick with you. One of the lesser appreciated points about NJ is that it's governor, so I've read, is the most powerful in the country vis a vis other statewide constituencies. Doing this made it possible for Christie not only to get bills passed in the legislature, some of which harmed traditional Democratic constituencies while rewarding Democratic power players (a neat trick if you can do it), but to outflank any Dem politician planning to run against him in 2013. Thus, only a party outsider like Buono took the plunge. So the story is less about personality and "center/right" politics than it is about playing the power game astutely. How that will play out in Republican primaries in 2016 is hard to tell. But the same strategy can be used only this time using future appointments, future legislative promises, etc. to gather the support of Republican power centers in relevant states. I have no doubt everyone tries to do this but Christie seems unusually gifted at these kinds of power plays and unusually ruthless in doing so. Expect this to be part of the big Christie story in the future. northjersey.com

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