WHY CHRIS CHRISTIE WILL BE THE NEXT POTUS
A
SUPER TUESDAY AWAY FROM DOUBLE DIGITS
THE
VIEW FROM THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS
By
JOHN McCARTHY
Moderate
Voice Columnist
The
eighteen Republicans running for president in 2016 are wise to try to make
foreign policy the lead issue in the next POTUS election.
Not
because Hillary Clinton is especially vulnerable on Benghazi, but because what
most people would consider to be her strong suit – foreign policy due to her
four years as Secretary of State – is actually her biggest weakness.
If
you had to put one person from the United States in a locked room with
President-For-Life Vladimir Putin and see who comes out alive – how many of us
would chose Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Although
Clinton and Putin are in the same height and weight class (Hillary is actually
three centimeters taller than Vladimir), the next leader of the free world
needs to be someone who really could be locked in a cage with a wild coyote for
a week ala the late German artist Joseph Beuys.
When
it comes to the high-stakes world that the next POTUS will inherit, ISIS will
be ruling the roost in modern-day Babylon, a Charles Mansonian vision of
interracial and police-state relations will be the order of the day in the
United States – and who did America last elect to the highest office in the
land the last time its cities were burning on TV in class warfare? Answer:
Richard Milhouse Nixon.
To
say Chris Christie’s career resembles Tricky Dick’s at this nascent stage is an
insult to the statesman Nixon who brokered détente with the former Soviet Union
with an historic anti-ballistic missile treaty, opened the door to Red China
with Deng Xiaoping and late in life predicted that the Middle East would erupt
in religious fervor once the United States won the Cold War and was reduced to
lone superpower status.
The
difference is that Nixon already had one term under his heavyweight belt before
the Committee to Re-Elect the President or C.R.E.E.P. started its political
dirty tricks program that would eventually lead to his resignation from office
because of the Watergate scandal.
But
the similarities are there as well, Nixon and Christie were each people with
significant prosecutorial skills. Richard went after Communists such Alger Hiss
in the “Pumpkin Papers” during the House Un-American Activities Committee
hearings as a young congressman and Christie went 130-0 as a federal prosecutor
stamping out political corruption, sexual slavery, arms trafficking and
racketeering in a six-year career as the U.S. Attorney of New Jersey.
The
fact that Christie was undefeated as a federal prosecutor used to be plainly
visible on Wikipedia a year ago, but to find such information today one has to
Google “Chris Christie’s record as a federal prosecutor and go to the
biography.com website.
Which
only goes to show you that although Nixon did not survive Watergate, Christie
thus far has not only outlasted the Bridgegate scandal (officially the “Fort
Lee Lane Closure Scandal” on Wikipedia) but has dusted himself off briskly and
is grandly taking the national stage with a slugger’s swagger that only a
heavyweight champion of the world can muster.
All
the most trusted indicators suggest that the American economy will be in better
shape for Hillary Clinton’s second candidacy than it was when President Obama
ran for a second term in 2012, meaning that “it’s the economy, stupid” isn’t
likely to be the game changer it was for George Herbert Walker Bush – in any
potential campaign by Jeb.
But
that only means that foreign and domestic policy matters – in terms of homeland
security – will be even more at the forefront. And a milquetoast
Jebby-Come-Lately like John Ellis Bush isn’t anyone’s first pick to clean up in
that department. A former federal prosecutor who went 130-0 against the bad guys
certainly has a track record of performance that could lend an ear in an
ultimate prize fight along those lines.
The
nation is in the middle of a sense of malaise it has not seen since the days of
President Jimmy Carter in the 1970’s – essentially the fallout from the Nixon
years with a double whammy of OPEC oil prices that sent gas prices soaring and
Iranian hostage-taking that made the American public feel helpless and
hopeless.
“Hope”
was the prominent word in the campaign poster for Barack Obama that led the
most unlikely of presidential candidates from the South Side of Chicago to the
right side of the Oval Office and is the place in Arkansas that President Bill
Clinton is famously from, but if recent elections are a two-point statistical
indicator of where the United States might turn in 2016 – it is unlikely that a
Bush or a Clinton will fit the presidential bill.
Chris
Christie was most recently quoting as saying that he is tired of hearing about
the minimum wage and the mere fact that the two-term New Jersey governor can
even utter such a statement is even more proof that the economy will be less of
an issue in the upcoming election than even Democrats can imagine.
Christie
is not afraid of the New York Daily News reporting that he makes $700,000 per
year and is mocking “16.5 million Americans working for minimum wage. “His own
bank account is well-padded – as is his rear end,” the Daily News opined. But
what that says to me is not so much that the governor is bucking to be
neighborhood bully, so much as that he is fighting mad about not yet being
taken seriously as one of the most lethal candidates in presidential politricks
today.
Hillary
Clinton has a certain aura about her, based on the fact that she was First
Lady, Senator of New York and Secretary of State, but she lacks the gravitas
that allows someone to win a fight without actually having to fight it –
because the opponent fears the contender. Just wait until Jeb Bush, Scott
Walker, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump have to go toe-to-toe with
Christie on the debate stage. Hang on to your comb-over!
It
will not be a fair fight and it is likely that Christie will be the rare
political opponent who could win the argument with his mouth or his fists,
although no one is likely to take the former football player (just like Nixon)
up on the latter. No one will even question Christie’s gravitas – especially
Putin when he tries to make another land grab in Eastern Europe.
So
in a fight to the finish in the death-cage match that is real-world
geo-politics, the main event question is: who do we want in our corner? Someone
who can ensure our existence for another 250 years? Or someone who could lead
to our ultimate downfall?
Prize
fights are rarely scored fairly, no matter how distinguished the ringside
judges are for the bout.
