Cranbury Forum | Bulletin | Info Sharing

Post a reply

Username

Subject

Message body

Emoticons

Font colour: Font size:

Close Tags

[quote="Guest"][quote="Guest"][quote="Guest"]This was a short sited partisan political decision by Christie.  It will come back to haunt him and NJ republicans for years[/quote]

Sadly, I agree that politically this decision will "come back to haunt him" because, like you, most people choose to ignore the complexities and base their opinion on knee jerk reactions. Simple arguments are easier to make, and they tend to stick. I think this is endemic of a much greater and more serious problem in America- the willful ignorance of the intelligencia. i[/quote]

LOL at the suggestion that Christie is about complex solutions rather than knee-jerk, simple arguments.  Wow, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Christie is the King of knee-jerk, simplistic black-or-white positions and sound bites.  He's all war and no diplomacy.  Diplomacy and compromise is complex.  Negotiations are complex; ultimatums and unilateral declarations are simple.  Simply making headlines by outright killing a project that will dramatically impact NJ for decades to look fiscally conservative is simple.  Complex would have been to recognize the importance of the critical need for a tunnel to NJ’s future and the livelihoods of millions of NJ taxpayers and to recognize that solving that problem one way or another was more important than a political stunt and more important than proving he’s consistent to his goal of reducing costs.

A real leader would have had the courage to go against the grain of his campaign slogans if the issue was important enough and the facts supported the issue, just as two members of the local TC did recently on the budget.  They risked the wrath of their own party to do what they thought was right based on the facts.  Or look at George Bush who went against everything he had stood for for 8 years in pushing a $1.5 trillion dollar bail out near the end of his second term because he placed the importance of the economic recovery, as he saw it based on the best facts available at the time, ahead of his general principles or reputation within the party.  Whether you agree with him or not, that was leadership and courage, not what Christie did.  The facts on the economic impact of the tunnel and the impact to the quality of life for millions of citizens are clear.  A real leader would have rolled-up his sleeves and found the savings a different way, killed or scaled back other projects that weren’t as critical to the state, or become more conciliatory with his political peers and won more compromises.  There were dozens of approaches to the problem of the tunnel costs available short of the dramatic step of merely killing it.  But none of them were as simplistic or as favorable to his bulldog, no-compromise image.  Christie never even tried.  Instead he took the immediate entrenched position of arrogantly demanding that the Feds and NY pay or else, which was a silly bluff since NJ had way more to lose than the feds or NY state.  That is not complex, that is not leadership, and it was not right for the state or its citizens.[/quote]

Options
HTML is ON
BBCode is ON
Smilies are ON

	Disable HTML in this post
	Disable BBCode in this post
	Disable Smilies in this post