(Sorry for the somewhat insensitive title--but the governor himself often makes light of his heavy!)
So let's see, New Jersey still has among the highest property taxes in the country, which Christie promised to fix six years ago; our infrastructure and highways are crumbling from total neglect and the governor's refusal to raise the the NJ gas tax--the nation's lowest--to pay for repairs. Three years after Superstorm Sandy people are still trying to get federal money to fix their homes; Christie cancelled the tunnel project to Manhattan in the teeth of the recession, which cost thousands of jobs plus an easer commute to NYC; lost millions in federal education aid because his people didn't file the correct forms on time; and illegally refuses to fund the state pension obligations after promising to fix that situation in his first term.
And... his administration paid $6 million to a contractor buddy from out of state to chop down a bunch of trees along the Garden State Parkway because he owed him a favor. He's also presided over an unprecedented nine state credit rating reductions and the highest foreclosure rate in the country (in Atlantic County). Not to mention the fact that he hasn't brought in much in the way of new business to NJ, which is still well behind most other states in terms of economic recovery and employment. And let's not even get started on the Geo. Washington Bridge lane closure fiasco perpetrated by his lackeys to punish a small-town mayor for refusing to support the governor's reelection.
So Christie's answer to all this? Run for president! I'm thinking he's doing it because he just may want to get out of Dodge!
Sure, he's a horrible candidate and doesn't stand a chance, even among an extremely weak slate of Republican candidates--most Republicans hate him anyway. But what really interests me is how some people have mastered the art of failing upwards. Christie was no better in his first term than he's been in his second, yet NJ voters reelected him in a landslide. The same could be said about Bush II, who trashed the economy and got us mired in an endless war in Iraq in his first term, but still got reelected.
I wish I could be rewarded for such poor performance.
The same thing happens in business. You've probably worked with people who seemed to always get promoted even though they were clueless about the business or incapable of producing anything of value. It happens at all levels. Carly Fiorina messed up at Lucent, only to be handed the CEO job at Hewlett Packard, which she proceeded to run into the ground, which got her fired. So what does Carly do? Runs for president. If she's good at anything, it's her ability to fail upwards.
The same thing happens in sports: lousy baseball managers, football coaches, and NBA head coaches fail repeatedly but are constantly recycled to different teams a year, or even months, later. These people fail upwards and laterally and get rewarded. How do they do it? It's a mystery to me. Who hires these people? Who votes for these people. What is in their brains? Haven't they heard that overworked Einstein quote in which he said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?"
There's a lot of insanity going around. For today, let's mark Chris Christie as Exhibit A.
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