The real Chris Christie

Governor-elect Christopher J. Christie.  How sweet it is for the thousands of volunteers who worked since February to support this great man for NJ Governor.  I am proud to be one of them.

Congratulations go to him and to his wife Mary Pat and terrific family.  Also congratulations to Lt Governor-elect Kim Guadagno on her election.  Her stellar performance on the campaign trail was a major asset to the Governor-elect, and proved his good judgment in choosing her.

When Gov-elect Christie was named US Attorney, most observers ignored his call that public corruption would be a major priority of his office.  This is Jersey, after all, where pay-to-play and apparently other seedier behaviors were standard operating procedure in many communities.

If any seasoned people thought about his comments, they would have dismissed it as unlikely.

We all know that Chris proved the skeptics wrong, and developed a strong track record and reputation on the public corruption front.

In fact, I have found that the Governor-elect is at his best when he is proving skeptics wrong, and not taking the conventional road.

It is the sheer, iron will of a confident man, sure of his strengths, while knowlegable of his shortcomings, and willing to take risks to accomplish great things.

In this respect, he is not your conventional politician. 

His campaign proves my point.  The irony is that most "observers" during the campaign felt he was playing it safe, or "running out the clock" in his conduct of the campaign, especially when it came to having a detailed "tax plan."  They were wrong.

There were ill-willing media commentators who wanted him to lose, but there were also well-meaning friends and allies (sometimes the writer included), who questioned his campaign strategies.

The irony is that the "easy" road, not the harder, riskier road, would have been to bend to conventional wisdom and conduct his campaign on other people's terms. 

He would have none of it.  His campaign strategies were the riskiest of them all.  They confounded his friends and frustrated editorial writers, but it was his calculated risk, run his way, and by sheer force of personal will he pulled it off, defying all the odds.  This was not the cynical political calculation of a wily politician.  This was an honest candidate who said from day one that the solutions to our tax problems were complex, there were no silver bullets, and he would not be forced into making promises he couldn't keep, or offering gimmicky tax ideas that would never get enacted.  He was honest with himself, honest with the public, and never veered off this path, no matter how many times others wanted him to do it, and no matter how easy and tempting it was to do it.

That is the real Chris Christie.  The direction he will seek to take, whether it is political or on a policy point, is always well-thought out, well-researched, and vetted.  But when he chooses a path, there should be no more doubters left in NJ about his sheer force of will and ability to accomplish great things.