by Dick Polman
Chris Christie's spin session was longer than Robert Redford's broken boat movie, All Is Lost. We don't yet know whether Christie's drama warrants that title, because we're still in the first reel. Better that we simply assess Thursday's press conference, which played like a tacky sitcom comedy - namely Hogan's Heroes, co-starring the willfully dimwitted Sgt. Schultz, who always said stuff like "I know nothing!" and "I see nothing! I was not here! I did not even get up this morning!"
For someone who purports to be a hypercompetent executive, it's amazing what Christie says he didn't know about the bridge scandal, doesn't now know, and doesn't plan to know. Some prize examples:
1. "Prior to (Wednesday, when key emails went public), I believed that if I looked someone in the eye who I worked with and trusted and asked them, that I would get an honest answer. Maybe that was naive, but that's what I believed. So now I'm going and digging in and asking more questions."
Oh, I see. Now he's "digging in and asking more questions?" Why didn't he dig in on day one last September, when Fort Lee's ciitizens were first gridlocked? Why didn't he just pick up the phone and demand to know what was going on? Why didn't he walk a few feet to the desks of his senior staffers and demand full details? He had five months to dig in and ask questions. He's only vowing vigilance now because he got his butt burned.
By his telling, he sought answers early last month after the bridge story broke wide open. He told staffers they had one hour to confess any involvement in the lane-closure decision. Senior staffer Bridget Kelly did not speak up. When her key email surfaced Wednesday, Christie realized he had been "lied to," so he fired her. My question is, why didn't he work harder in early December to get the goods? Why was he so willing to take their innocence on faith? And are we supposed to believe that Christie - a seasoned prosecutor, a former U.S. attorney - rose in his career by being "naive?" Prosecutors, like cops, are conditioned by experience to know that people lie, evade, and dissemble.
He didn't know because he didn't want to know. That would have made him fully complicit in the scandal - as opposed to just being the guy who set the tone, who created the revenge/retribution climate. (Which is bad enough.)
MUCH more at http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/national-interest/63721-christie-plays-sgt-schultz-qi-see-nothing-i-know-nothingq
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