In our view, it’s a problem of democracy that a man such as Chris Christie can win a powerful public office. What attracts voters to someone so grouchy, impatient and fearful? Does he mirror their own anxieties? If so, why is this an asset? In any case, we doubt that Richard Pérez-Peña’s commendable hounding is going to cramp his style or lower his ratings.

Misstatements have been central to Mr. Christie’s worst public stumbles — about how the state managed to miss out on a $400 million education grant last year, for example, and whether he was in touch enough while he was in Florida during the blizzard in December — and his rare admissions that he was wrong. But Peter J. Woolley, a politics professor and polling director at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said there had been no sign, so far, that these issues had much effect on the governor’s political standing.

“People prefer directness to detail,” Professor Woolley said. “People know it’s not unusual for politicians to take the shortcut in public debate, that they’re not academics who are going to qualify everything.”

Some overstatements have worked their way into the governor’s routine public comments, like a claim that he balanced the budget last year without raising taxes; in truth, he cut deeply into tax credits for the elderly and the poor. But inaccuracies also crop up when he is challenged, and his instinct seems to be to turn it into an attack on someone else instead of giving an answer.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 10th, 2011 at 8:00 pm.