Governor Christie and the George Washington Bridge

By now everyone has probably heard about the problems New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is facing with a certain incident on the George Washington Bridge.  For anyone unfamiliar with the story, it happened when Christie was in the middle of his re-election campaign.  The George Washington Bridge connects New Jersey with New York City and enters Jersey in the city of Fort Lee.  Fort Lee's Mayor, Mark Sokolich is a Democrat (Christie is Republican) and did not support Christie in the election.

A top aide to Christie (Bridget Anne Kelly) sent an email to Port Authority of New York and New Jersey representative David Wildstein, who was appointed to this post by Christie.  The email said, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."  Wildstein replied with, "Got it."  He then ordered the closure of two of the three traffic lanes going into New York and kept them closed for four days.

Estimates are that as many as 500,000 vehicles were impacted by this action, resulting in millions of dollars in lost wages and time spent in unnecessarily heavy traffic.  There is also one death that has potentially been attributed to the closure.

Wildstein has resigned his position and when the cause of the closure was determined, Christie fired Kelly as his aide.  In press conferences Christie has maintained that he did not know anything about this incident until long after it was done and even went so far as to personally apologize to Mayor Sokolich for the unfortunate event.

All of this is well and good and on the surface makes it seem that Christie should not be implicated in this, however there is more to it.  Christie hired Kelly.  He should have either done a more extensive check of her background and moral character or at the very least made sure she understood that he had zero tolerance for such political shenanigans.  Christie also appointed Wildstein and he should have ensured that Wildstein was instructed appropriately as well.  Obviously, this was not done.

Christie is now considering a run for the office of President of the United States.  As President he will be appointing the entire Cabinet of his administration, as well as Ambasaddors and Judges, including possibly Supreme Court Judges.  Given his record of hiring and appointments, I have to seriously question whether he is the best person to be given this responsibility.  We don't need people like Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein running any part of our country.