How Christie’s Contrition Intensifies Spotlight On Obama’s Irresponsibility
Whatever you might think about the cantankerous New Jersey governor, his prompt response to the bridge closing accusations makes even more clear how Obama fails as a leader during his many scandals.
The “BridgeGate” scandal is all the rage, and political pundits happily and gleefully declare Christie’s presidential hopes dead with all the mirth of hungry vultures devouring a corpse. If the media had an ounce of honesty, their behavior towards Christie’s scandal would shame them into their own apology speech after ignoring and defending Obama throughout much worse allegations.
In his long press conference in Trenton, Mr. Christie was properly contrite, saying he had been “lied to” by the senior aide he proceeded to fire. He also said he is withdrawing his support for his former campaign manager to run the state Republican Party because the man had shown “callous and indifferent” behavior toward the people inconvenienced by the traffic-lane closures.
By contrast, Obama delayed speaking about the Benghazi attack and when he did, he would not recognize it as a terror attack in order to protect his re-election campaign. Then further, he sent out administration officials to lie for him, never once taking responsibility for the death of four Americans by a terrorist attack that should have been repelled with quick executive action.
Which brings us to the Obama Administration, which quickly leaked to the media that the U.S. Attorney is investigating the lane closures as a criminal matter. Well, that sure was fast, and nice of Eric Holder‘s Justice Department to show its typical discretion when investigating political opponents.
Isn’t that ironic? Obama’s administration leaked this information that would be politically damaging to a political opponent about political retribution! And yet this essential tidbit that demonstrates the partisan nature of this administration is hardly evoked in the myriad of news media attacks on Christie.
Now add to this the lack of character that Obama displayed over the IRS scandal:
This is the same Administration that won’t tell Congress what resources it is devoting to the IRS probe, and appears to be slow-rolling it. It has also doubled down by expanding the political vetting of 501(c)(4) groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lois Lerner, who ran the IRS tax-exempt shop and took the Fifth before Congress, was allowed to “retire,” presumably with a pension. Acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller resigned under pressure but no other heads have rolled. Yet compared to using the IRS against political opponents during an election campaign, closing traffic lanes for four days is jaywalking.
Notice also the difference between Obama continually saying he didn’t know about any of the scandals – at one point Jay Carney even said that Obama heard about a scandal when reading about it in newspapers the next day. The White House won’t even divulge if Obama was awake during the conclusion of the Benghazi attack, or whether he had gone to sleep early. Meanwhile, Christie is bombarded by questions from the media on when he knew, and how much he knew about the bridge lane closings.
Chris Christie at least showed some political courage and integrity in actually firing people who were responsible for the lapses in managing his state government, while Obama seems to ignore such acts, and sometimes even reward him. Meanwhile the media is all too eager to encourage and enable the practice of what seems to be Obama’s only skill – to avoid responsibility.
