Chris Christie’s book tour lands with a thud
There’s not really much to be said about Chris Christie that hasn’t been already. At one point, he was a respected governor of a reliably blue state and seen as a moderate – largely because he wasn’t as openly corrupt and racist as fellow contemporary Republican governors like Paul LePage or Rick Scott and in less than two years, he became the least popular governor in America over a scandal that his administration didn’t even need to concoct in the first place.
After that, his political career pretty much hit a dead end, as the move that made him popular – an efficient response to Hurricane Sandy – also killed his reputation with Republicans across the country: a photo of him hugging President Obama when the GOP was running on a platform of anti-Obama sentiment.
Somewhere along the line, cable news pundits saw him as a go-to expert on elections – probably in the name of fairness or some other nonsense and CNN decided to do a documentary to whitewash his image in the eyes of national voters. It’s not quite clear why they gave the despised former governor free publicity for his new book – but it ended poorly for them. The ratings for the show cratered – mostly because Christie doesn’t have much mileage beyond the Beltway pundits – and the most memorable thing about this tour is a viral clip of Christie being ripped to pieces by Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC.
There is, however, some good news in this: refusing to tune in when the media is clearly giving puff pieces to awful people is having an effect. If there were a moment to show their desperation for ratings for what it is – this is it. We now need to treat the doomcast pundits accordingly while putting in the work needed to win.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making