Excerpted from Gov. Chris Christie’s speech at the Reagan Library on Tuesday.
My favorite Reagan story happened 30 years ago, in August 1981. The air-traffic controllers, in violation of their contracts, went on strike. President Reagan ordered them back to work, making clear that those who refused would be fired. In the end, thousands refused, and thousands were fired.
I cite this not as a parable of labor relations but as a parable of principle. Reagan’s demand was not an empty political play; it was leadership, pure and simple.
Reagan said it best himself, “I think it convinced people who might have thought otherwise that I meant what I said.”
His willingness to articulate a determined stand and then carry it out sent the signal that the occupant of the Oval Office was someone who could be predicted to stand by his friends and stand up to his adversaries.
Principle would not stop at the water’s edge. The Reagan who challenged Soviet aggression, or attacked a Libya that supported terror, was the same Reagan who stood up years before to [the air-traffic-controllers’ union].
All this has meaning for us today. This country pays a price whenever our economy fails to deliver rising living standards to our citizens — which is exactly what has been the case for years now. We pay a price when our political system cannot come together and agree on the difficult but necessary steps to rein in entitlement spending or reform our tax system. We pay a price when special interests win out over the collective national interest.
We are seeing just this in the partisan divide that’s so far made it impossible to reduce our staggering deficits and to create an environment in which there is more job creation than job destruction.
This is where the contrast between what has happened in New Jersey and what is happening in Washington, DC, is the most clear.
In New Jersey over the last 20 months, you’ve actually seen divided government that is working. To be clear, it does not mean that we have no acrimony. There are serious disagreements, sometimes expressed loudly — Jersey style.
Here is what we did. We identified the problems. We proposed specific means to fix them. We educated the public on the dire consequences of inaction. And we compromised, on a bipartisan basis, to get results. We took action.
How so, you ask? Leadership and compromise.
Leadership and compromise is the only way you can balance two budgets with over $13 billion in deficits without raising taxes while protecting core services; the only way you reform a pension and health-benefits system that was collectively $121 billion underfunded, the only way you cap the highest property taxes in the nation.
In New Jersey we have done this, and more, because the Executive Branch has not sat by and waited for others to go first to suggest solutions to our state’s most difficult problems.
Being a mayor, being a governor, being a president means leading by taking risk on the most important issues of the day. In New Jersey we have done this with a legislative branch, held by the opposite party, because it is led by two people who have more often put the interests of our state above the partisan politics of their caucuses.
Our bipartisan accomplishments have helped to set a tone that has taken hold across many other states. It is a simple but powerful message — lead on the tough issues by telling your citizens the truth about the depth of our challenges. Tell them the truth about the difficulty of the solutions. This is the only effective way to lead in America during these times.
In Washington, on the other hand, we have watched as we drift from conflict to conflict, with little or no resolution.
We watch a president who once talked about the courage of his convictions, but still has yet to find the courage to lead. We watch a Congress at war with itself because they are unwilling to leave campaign style politics at the Capitol’s door. The result is a debt-ceiling limitation debate that made our democracy appear as if we could no longer effectively govern ourselves.
And still we continue to wait and hope that our president will shake off the paralysis that has made it impossible for him to take on the really big things that are obvious to all Americans and to a watching and anxious world.
Yes, we hope. Because each and every time the president lets a moment to act pass him by, his failure is our failure too. The failure to stand up for the bipartisan debt solutions of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a report the president asked for himself … the failure to act on the country’s crushing unemployment … the failure to discern pork barrel spending from real infrastructure investment.
The rule for effective governance is simple. It is one Ronald Reagan knew by heart. And one that he successfully employed: When there is a problem, you fix it. That is the job you have been sent to do and you cannot wait for someone else to do it for you.