An Open Letter to Our Governor and the Next President, as They Say on the Campaign Trail
Creative Commons Licensed Image "Chris Christie - Caricature”" by Donkey Hotey. Some rights reserved.
Welcome back, Mister Governor.
We are sorry the storm emergency ruined your campaign schedule, and appreciate your abruptly taking the time off to drop in and declare an emergency before heading back to our sister state, New Hampshire.
At first, you sent word you didn’t have to come home to deal with the emergency.
We can appreciate your hesitancy. After all, early on the forecasters were predicting 1 or 2 to 4 inches. They were off a bit, by about 600%.
As you said, you had been through 17 snow emergencies in your six years in office. It was as if you could just phone it in: Stay the hell off the beaches or the roads. Stop the trains and busses. Close the tunnels and bridges. The usual.
It reminded us of what another great Republican governor said when confronted with the emergency of rapacious lumber companies cutting down 1,000 year-old forests in California. “If you’ve seen one redwood,” said Gov. Ronald Reagan, the old tree-hugger, “you’ve seen them all.”
Fortunately, governor, you didn’t listen to advisers—especially the ones who thought it was a good idea to close toll lanes at the GWB— and grudgingly jumped into a taxpayer-financed black car and briefly appeared in the Newark Department of Transportation garage on Friday.
It was good to see you again, even if it was only for a day. If that was you. Some of us no longer can recognize you; your presence is so rare. BTW, you seem to have put on a little weight. But that’s understandable, with all those slices of pizza and donuts meeting your people as the co-governor of New Hampshire.
Suffice it to say, we are glad you weren’t in Disneyland this time.
Now we realize how busy you are at your other job. You didn’t even have time to come back to Trenton to sign the hundred or so bills on your desk, passed by both our Houses, waiting for your signature. Without your signature, the bills become null and void at the end of a session.
Either by design or neglect of duties, one bill that got short shrift, or no shrift, that really puzzled folks was the gun safety law improvement bill you vetoed, since you were such a firm advocate of tougher state gun laws when you ran for governor.
Heck, as I tell your critics, you probably didn’t have time to read all those bills, no less know what’s in them.
“Folks just want to criticize me,” you told the panel on “Morning Joe” this morning (Jan. 25). “They are just making things up.”
How unfair people can be. In fact, there are those who think you should be fired or at least suspended for the unexplained absence without a doctor’s note, or at least docked for days away from your desk in Trenton.
I’m not one of them. While the numbers look bad —279 days away in 2015—what about the other 86 days? Your hand- picked lieutenant governor, what’s Her Name, would have done even more damage to the state.
Excuse me for sounding a little irritable, governor. The dog sled I ordered for the emergency still hasn’t arrived.
While I have your ear, or eye, governor, a word or two of advice.
1Despite all the time you’ve taken off from your part- time job in Trenton, you’re still running 13th in the 12-person race (I’ve lost track of the exact numbers in the ratpack).
You have stressed your achievements in New Jersey as qualifications for higher office: Economic growth (only nine bond down grades since your election); an unbalanced budget (but only for the last three years); a Transportation Fund bankrupt (only 37% of our bridges need repairs).
Somehow, none of this is working. And it’s going to be worse in the South Carolina Primary. With your New Jersey values, those damn Rebels already think of you as a socialist moderate.
My advice is give your resume to Trump for the job of Attorney General now. You’d make a great AG with your background as a federal prosecutor. There’ll be lots of work, investigating all those corrupt Democrats, starting with Hillary. On what grounds? Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.
In the meanwhile, you might ask for asylum in New Hampshire.
Yours for better governance,
--
Marvin Kitman
January 25, 2016
