When he delivered a major national policy address in Washington this week, Chris Christie made sure to include in his remarks a humorous — but firm — denial of any plans to seek the presidency in 2012.
“Apparently,” he said, “I actually have to commit suicide to convince people I’m not running.”
New Jersey’s first-term governor has been using some variation of this line for months now, ever since his charismatic mix of bluntness and charm turned him into an unexpected political sensation.
And there’s reason to believe he means it. Christie, by all measures, is having a blast in Trenton and is in no hurry to leave. He also surely realizes that in New Jersey, where even popular Republicans face uphill climbs, charges of skipping out on the job would take a severe toll on his prospects for re-election in 2013. For Christie to pursue the White House next year, the odds of success would have to be pretty good and, well, right now they just aren’t. Why mess with a good thing?
But his well-received DC speech to the American Enterprise Institute, which was preceded by a media build-up that a full-fledged presidential candidate would envy and that was carried live on Fox News, could also be seen as part of an effort by Christie to improve those odds and to position himself to play the white knight role in the 2012 GOP race, riding in at the last minute to save the party from its mediocre roster of candidates.
It wouldn’t exactly be the first time we’ve seen a set-up like this.
Twenty years ago at this same juncture, a charismatic up-and-coming governor from the other party was interested in running for president. But in his re-election campaign the previous fall, Bill Clinton had promised Arkansas voters that he would stay put for his entire term and not seek the White House in 1992. Clinton had made this vow out of political necessity and quickly came to regret it, especially as it became clear in the early part of 1991 just how wide open his party’s presidential field would be.
The overwhelming popularity of President George H.W. Bush in the wake of the Gulf War had frozen the Democratic race. None of the party’s A-list prospects — Bill Bradley, Richard Gephardt, Jay Rockefeller, Al Gore and Mario Cuomo, to name a few — were willing to run, and as the months wore on, only a few decidedly second-tier prospects, like Paul Tsongas, Doug Wilder and Tom Harkin, stepped forward.
For Clinton, this was the optimal situation. With the Democratic race developing at such a slow pace — and with the field littered with weaklings — there was no hurry to launch a full-fledged national campaign. Waiting until midway through the year before the election to jump in would have been suicide for a presidential prospect in previous cycles, but this one was shaping up as an exception.
It was against this backdrop that in May 1991 Clinton traveled out of Arkansas to deliver a major national speech. The setting was Cleveland, where the Democratic Leadership Council — the centrist group that was then near the peak of its influence — was holding its annual convention. The political world had been eagerly anticipating his speech for weeks. While he still refused to say so, it was obvious that Clinton was interested in running.
A few years earlier, he’d bombed as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, but in Cleveland, he didn’t disappoint. In a rousing address, Clinton outlined a clear, if radical, policy roadmap for a party coming off three straight humiliating national election defeats: Embrace tax relief for the middle class, support a strong national defense (this was just months after most congressional Democrats had opposed the Gulf War) and rein in Big Government.
The reviews were enthusiastic. “He gave a dynamic speech,” one New Hampshire Democrat in attendance said. “I sat there in wonderment, because it was not the Governor Clinton I have seen.” The Democrats of 1991 were desperately searching for a message — and a messenger — to break them out of their political funk. With his Cleveland speech, Clinton showed he had that potential.
Of course, like Christie, he continued to insist he wasn’t interested in the White House. “I’m still where I was,” Clinton told reporters. “I’m not running.”
But he’d done all he had to do. Every time they looked at the candidates who were in the race, it seemed, Democrats warmed even more to the idea of a Clinton candidacy. In early September, he finally took back the pledge for good and confirmed that he would run. The formal announcement came on Oct. 3, and the rest is history.
The parallels aren’t exact, but there are some striking similarities between Christie’s position now and Clinton’s back in 1991.
The race for the ’12 GOP nomination has been slow-starting; there are still no announced candidates. And the prospective field is most notable for the lack of enthusiasm it’s generating from the Republican base. There’s an obvious opening for Christie, who has attained virtual rock star status on the right. And like Clinton in ’91, he has (some) time and can afford to be coy. In fact, it’s working out just fine: In the recent CPAC straw poll, Christie — who was nowhere near the conference — finished with 6 percent, better than half of the Republicans who are actively positioning themselves to run.
Granted, Clinton had far more experience as a governor than Christie does now. After 12 years in office, he had reached the point where he had nothing to lose by running for the White House. Christie’s not there yet. But let’s see what happens after he delivers a few more speeches like this week’s.
Maybe, just maybe, sometime in June or July he’ll look at the rest of his party’s field and reach the same conclusion Bill Clinton did 20 years ago:
Hey, I can beat these guys.
Excerpts from Gov. Christie’s Wednesday speech to the American Enterprise Institute:
“In New Jersey they call me impatient. Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s time for some impatience. I think it’s time for some impatience in America.”
“The old playbook says lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election. You know, there’s a study that says by 2020, New Jersey is one of 11 states whose pensions could be bankrupt. And when I told a friend of mine about that study, he said to me, ‘Well wait. By 2020, you won’t be governor. What the hell do you care?’ That’s the way politics has been practiced in our country for too long and practiced in New Jersey for too long.”
“You’ll have folks tell you that every bit of federal spending is absolutely necessary and laudatory. It’s not. And, in fact, some of it’s not even laudatory, let alone necessary.”
“[The president] says the big things are high-speed rail. The big things are high-speed Internet access for almost 80% of America or something by some date. One million electric cars on the road by some date. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the candy of American politics. Those are not the big things.”
“When they say we need to study the executive’s proposal, you think because you speak English, that means they’re really going to take some time, consider it and then act. No, no. What that means in Trenton, and what I suspect it means in Washington also, is this: It means we are going to drag our feet for as long as we can until we hope it dies a natural death because God knows we don’t want our fingerprints on it for murdering it, but we also don’t have the guts to do it. That’s what ‘study’ means in government parlance.”