A few days ago, the Presidential race lost two competitors about whom we can charitably say that, they are not nice people. I’m talking about Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina, of course.
About Chris Christie
I recently heard an interesting story about Chris Christie, which probably tells you all you need to know about the character of the man. This story came from the new husband of my partner’s aunt, a man with a long and distinguished military career who was once brought to the State of the Union address by current Vice-President Joe Biden. This man, like Chris Christie, is a graduate of the University of Delaware, and back in 2010, the University had a celebration to induct 10 of their alumni into a “Wall of Fame.” In any case, during the ceremony our friend was seated in front of Chris Christie in a two-row seating arrangement, an arrangement that had been made by the organizers of the event. Governor Christie objected to being seated in the 2nd row behind our friend – and in fairness, as a sitting Governor, they probably should have put him in the front row – and voiced his objections rather forcefully. After the event, there was a cocktail party, and our friend went up to Governor Christie to shake his hand.
Governor Christie refused.
Even though our friend had nothing to do with the seating arrangements.
Even though our friend was still in full military uniform.
I know Governor Christie has talked about “strengthening” our military, and I’m sure he’s talked about how much he “honors” veterans, but apparently it was asking too much for him to sit behind one at a ceremony.
That’s really all you need to know about the character of the man.
Of course, this is the same Governor Christie who was involved in the “Bridgegate” scandal, where Christie’s staff ordered the closure of two lanes on the NJ side of the George Washington bridge in September of 2013, creating multi-mile long backups for commuters, in order to punish the Mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie for Governor in the 2013 Gubernatorial election. By the way, the Mayor of Fort Lee is a Democrat!
Governor Christie hid behind the fact that none of the several investigations that took place could prove that he ordered the lane closures. Fair enough. But if you’ve been around politics long enough, you know that one of two things is true: either Christie ordered it directly, but there is no way to prove it because it was never memorialized, or Christie gave his close subordinates reason to believe that this kind of behavior on their part would be acceptable to him. In either case, the news is not good.
About Carly Fiornia
I don’t have any funny anecdotes about Carly Fiorina. All I know about her is that many, many of her former employees were far from enamored of her, and that her record as CEO of Hewlitt-Packard was decidedly mixed. Many business leaders considered her decision to acquire Compaq a disaster, including such publications as Forbes.
Carly had some nice moments in the Republican debates, especially the 2nd debate back in September of 2015. She kicked Donald Trump’s ass around for a bit (and who doesn’t enjoy that?).
But listening to her, watching her, hearing her being interviewed, I just had the overwhelming impression that this woman is not a good person. The good character that Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders have shown in spades, that is not something we could attribute to Carly Fiorina.
Au Revoir, Deux Connards
So goodbye, Chris and Carly. It’s been fun having you, but like Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum before you, you two are now yesterday’s news. The sixteen munchkins are now down to five.
