New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie answers questions from the media about nurse Kaci Hickox's quarantine as Republican candidate for Connecticut governor Tom Foley, right, listens, Monday, Oct. 27, 2014, in Groton, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie seemed to have everything going his way after he teamed up with President Barack Obama in 2012 to marshal aid efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The Republican looked downright presidential. And bipartisan to boot.
Then, inexplicably, he decided to take a jump off the political high dive into an empty pool.
His first brilliant move was to apply the political screws to Fort Lee, N.J., Mayor Mark Sokolich for the mayor’s refusal to back Christie’s re-election campaign. A Christie staffer emailed a colleague at the New Jersey Port Authority, ”Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Miraculously, two our of three access lanes linking Fort Lee motorists to the George Washington Bridge were shut down for rush-hour “maintenance.” Children couldn’t get to school. Emergency vehicles were blocked. A huge traffic snarl followed.
State and federal investigators are looking into Christie’s role in the incident. Even if he had nothing to do with it, the incident left an indelible black mark on his political record. All of a sudden, one of the Republican Party’s bright lights in the 2016 presidential race went dark.
Christie has spent the following 18 months performing damage control and trying hard to fight his way back to viability. He was almost there.
Then Ebola came to New York City. Christie resumed his Take-Charge/Crisis Dude mode and stood before the cameras to announce tough new measures aimed at stopping Ebola in its tracks. New Jersey would immediately impose a mandatory quarantine on anyone coming from West Africa who had been in the vicinity of Ebola patients. That meant any volunteer medical personnel would be forced to comply if their airline tickets routed them through New Jersey. Kaci Hickox, a nurse who graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, became the first test dummy for Christie’s new policy. Only Christie wound up looking like the dummy.
Oops moment number one occurred when Dr. Christie, steeped in all of the intricate details of Ebola symptoms from his non-existent experience with the disease, declared that Hickox was “obviously ill” and therefore merited quarantine. A forehead thermometer registered an elevated temperature, but subsequent thermometer checks showed her temperature as normal. Hickox protested, drawing from her extensive experience on the front lines dealing with Ebola patients and noting that she was entirely asymptomatic and not contagious and unlikely to have Ebola. Dr. Christie overrode her.
Oops moment number two came when Hickox tested negative for Ebola. Not once but twice. Future President Christie dug in and insisted that he was right, she was wrong, end of discussion. She had to stay in quarantine.
Oops moment number three came when Hickox complained that her plastic quarantine tent only had a toilet and sink. Was she supposed to spend the next 21 days in this thing? Christie responded: “Malarkey,” and “She was doing just fine.” In the end, he said, she would realize that he was right and she was wrong.
Oops moment number four occurred when the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and overwhelming numbers of actual doctors and nurses surged forth with a collective voice of outrage and told Christie that his quarantine policy amounted to overkill. Once again, Dr. Christie insisted that he was right and his detractors were wrong.
Oops moment number five occurred when Christie reversed stayed the course by declaring that his policy would remain in effect but that, instead of having it remain in effect, he would agree to change it and release Hickox so she could go to her home in Maine. Acting ever-so presidential, he challenged Hickox to sue him if she felt her rights had been violated. “Bring it on,” he said.
Did Christie reverse stay the course on his policy (while letting Hickox go) because of White House pressure? “We work professionally together and I never felt any [pressure]. … There is absolutely no truth to it at all,” he said. “And by the way, if they did, it wouldn’t change my mind anyway.”
Except that he did change his mind.
I haven’t checked New Jersey’s gun laws lately. Is there a legal limit on how many times you’re allowed to shoot yourself in the foot?