George W. Bush

Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie might have a sizeable lead over Gov. Jon Corzine in three recent independent polls (and Steve Lonegan leads Corzine in one of them) but that doesn't mean the Washington insider community believes he will win.  Pundits outside of New Jersey are accustomed to be teased about New Jersey, where early polling is often more favorable toward Republicans than Election Day.  On October 27, 2004, there was a poll showing George W. Bush and John Kerry in a dead heat in New Jersey, and there was one on September 28, 2005 showing Douglas Forrester within four points of Corzine. And on September 20, 2006, Thomas Kean, Jr. led Robert Menendez 48%-45%.

"Considering that Corzine hasn't even started his re-election campaign and will spend millions of dollars of his own money when he finally does, and that Republicans haven't won statewide in New Jersey in a dozen years, Republicans may want to keep that champagne on ice before they start putting this contest into the win column," Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, told CNN yesterday.

New Jersey might be the bluest state in the nation.  The last time a Republican statewide candidate won New Jersey was in 1997.  Since then, 49 other states have elected a Republican to a statewide office. But also consider this: the last time New Jersey re-elected a Democratic governor was in 32 years ago.  Since 1977, 45 other states have re-elected a Democratic Governor.  Only New Jersey, South Dakota and Texas have not re-elected a Democratic governor since Brendan Byrne won his second term. (South Dakota has not elected a Democratic governor since 1974 -- the longest continuous streak in the nation.)

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Since 1824, when direct elections began, nine American Presidents never carried New Jersey: Martin Van Buren, James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush.  Of the ten best Presidents ranked by historians in a 2009 C-Span poll, New Jersey cast a majority of its electoral votes for all but Lincoln and Truman, and voted to support six of the worst: James Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Pierce, and Hayes.

One of the ten best Presidents was a New Jerseyan, Woodrow Wilson, who served as Governor from 1911 to 1913.  Wilson carried New Jersey in his first campaign, but lost it when he ran for re-election in 1916.  Before the direct election of Presidents, New Jersey supported James Madison for President in 1808, but not when Madison ran for a second term in 1812.

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Eight years ago, the last time the two United States Senators from New Jersey signed off on a candidate for U.S. Attorney, the appointment of a First Assistant U.S. Attorney was part of the deal.  That was when the new Republican President, George W. Bush, wanted to name Christopher Christie as the new federal prosecutor.  Because Christie had no criminal law or prosecutorial experience, Democratic Senators Robert Torricelli and Jon Corzine only agree to sign off on his appointment if they had input into the selection of Christie's number two.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Timpone was widely expected to get the First Assistant post; he was the one Torricelli and Corzine (mostly Torricelli; Corzine was a freshman) had been pushing.  He also became Christie's choice, and the new U.S. Attorney went to Washington to lobby on his behalf.  But Timpone's chances faded after FBI surveillance revealed that while acting as the defense attorney for former Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski, who had allegedly been recruited by federal prosecutors to be a witness against Torricelli, was visiting Torricelli at his home.  There was a feeling that Timpone had tipped off the senior Senator, and while he avoided prosecution for tampering, his prospects of becoming First Assistant were over. 

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While the national media currently focus on the economic stimulus program of President Barack Obama, a major internal battle is shaping up between his environmental team, led by Carol Browner, who will seek a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program and a carbon tax, and his economic team, led by Larry Summers, who will almost certainly oppose such measures as having a significant deleterious effect on economic recovery. There is no doubt that the economic team will prevail.

President Obama, however, does not need either a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax to attain his laudable air quality and greenhouse gas reduction goals. Over 40 per cent of all greenhouse gases generated in the United States emanate from coal fired power plants. A national program to begin the process of replacing coal plants with nuclear power plants would eliminate this greenhouse gas generation and likewise overwhelmingly reduce America's smog (ozone) and soot (particulate matter) pollution.

During the campaign, both President Obama and Vice President Biden spoke of an end to coal-fired power plants in America, but they were vague as to what would be the alternative power source. While both spoke of renewables such as solar and wind, neither was foolish enough to claim that solar and wind power could significantly meet the base load energy deficit left behind from the elimination of coal.

One would think that President Obama would thus readily embrace nuclear power as an alternative substitute for coal. The President, however, has never definitively supported the expansion of nuclear power in America. He has expressed his reluctance to do so due to his concern about the nuclear waste issue.

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Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie should say if he will ask former President George Bush or former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to campaign for him or raise money for his campaign, says State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Woodbridge). 

Appearing on a Fox morning show today, Christie said he would not ask former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to campaign for him, but sidestepped questions about Bush or Ashcroft. 

"He should answer the question," said Vitale, the Chairman of the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee.

Christie was a top fundraiser for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign before being named U.S. Attorney in 2001.  After leaving the Justice Department, Ashcroft received a federal monitor contract from Christie that could net the ex-Attorney General more than $50 million in fees.

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Two weeks after leaving office, New Jerseyans give George W. Bush an upside-down 25%-69% approval rating - horrible numbers, but substantially better than the 18%-78% he had in a November Quinnipiac University poll.  In November, for the first time in his presidency, he was upside down (45%-48%) among Republicans.  Today's Quinnipiac poll has his GOP approvals at 58%-33%, a major shift.

The last poll had Bush's approvals in New Jersey lower than Richard Nixon's were in May 1974, three months before the Watergate scandal forced his resignation. Nixon was upside-down at 19%-76%.  Among Republicans, Nixon was at 46%-44%.

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A prediction on a rising star in North Jersey Republican politics: Morristown attorney Cheryl Stanton, who returned to the state last summer after serving in the Bush administration as Special Assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel.  Stanton, 37, was a Law Clerk to then-U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Alito, and is now a partner at Ogletree Deakins, a national law firm with offices in Morristown. 

Stanton was a member of White House Judicial Selection Committee, where she helped evaluate candidates for federal judgeships. A Letter to the Editor she submitted to PolitickerNJ.com about the New Jersey Supreme Court is worth reading:

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson has been granted cabinet level status in Barack Obama’s administration – as Christie Whitman when George W. Bush was President.  But the EPA is not a cabinet level department and Jackson will lack some of the legal duties of a cabinet member.  Jackson is not in the line of presidential succession and would not have a vote if the cabinet discussed invoking the 25th amendment.

The last New Jerseyan in the line of succession was Michael Chertoff, who was 18th during his tenure as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Click here to view a list of New Jerseyans who have served in the President’s cabinet. Read More >

I voted for George Bush in 2000 primarily because he claimed America should have a "humble" foreign policy.  In the debates with Al Gore he spoke about America being an example to the rest of the world rather than being a great power that would impose its values on other peoples.  Also, during the campaign George Bush sounded as good as Ronald Reagan on the need to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

When we are attacked on September 11, 2001 and it soon became clear who was responsible for the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Americans rallied behind President Bush to go after Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  However, by 2002 the Bush administration already was deviating from the 2000 campaign rhetoric of limited government.  And it got worse for the American people in 2003 and 2004.  The Bush invasion of Iraq, a country that was not a threat to the American people, was the last straw for limited government Republicans.  Suffice it to say, by the time President Bush was seeking reelection against John Kerry in 2004, his neoconservative policies were anathema to Republicans like me who could not vote for him and support his big government agenda. 

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