Make no mistake, the GWB scandal is pure Chris Christie

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The politically-motivated closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge, targeting Democrats (probably not Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich but rather Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg), speaks volumes about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, those close to him, and the culture of bullying and retribution that lies at his core both personally and politically.

And while his various Republican pals and conservatives in the media are using this opportunity to slam President Obama, by suggesting that Christie, in contrast, owned up to the problem, apologized, and thereby showed true executive leadership, what we're actually seeing, and what is actually becoming more and more apparent as more and more comes out, is that Christie directly enabled this to happen whether he was in on the details or not and that there was a concerted effort to cover things up after the fact:

Some of Governor Christie's closest loyalists made an effort to keep information about the George Washington Bridge lane closures out of public view for months, as questions swirled about what now appears to have been a politically motivated vendetta, thousands of documents released Friday show.

The documents provide a sweeping timeline of the internal deliberations taking place among at least 10 of Christie's trusted aides. They stretch from the weeks before the September lane closings up to and beyond the November election and are punctuated with vulgarities aimed at the media and signs of tension between New York and New Jersey officials who share control of the agency that operates the bridge.

The documents also show that Port Authority Chairman David Samson, Christie's top appointee at the agency, blamed a New York official — the one who reopened the lanes and said the closings were possibly illegal — for a leak to the media.

Comparisons to Richard Nixon and his henchmen are apt, but any such historical perspective tends to shroud the point: This may all be rather Nixonian, but it's also pure Chris Christie: playing politics as if it's a feudal (and very personal) bloodsport, pitting loyalists against everyone else, bullying the media when the story emerged, resorting to sarcasm and ad hominem attacks to try to blow things off, along with that Jersey swagger that is so typically his, supposedly apologizing but hardly taking responsibility and really just blaming others, throwing anyone and everyone under the bus, whatever is required to save his political skin, showing his massive egotism in stressing how hurt he is by all this, how he was let down, suggesting he's the real victim here, his sycophantic minions circling the wagons and waging an ongoing campaign of lies and smears to protect their master, just he wanted from them.

Really, this whole scandal has it all. And however much he may continue to deny that he had any knowledge of anything that was going on, it has his fingerprints all over it.