Chris Christie aides' emails suggest intentionally created traffic nightmare

[DGuller]

Same here.  By the same token, the road to hell is paved with ethical shortcuts for the greater good.

Indeed.

There is nobody more dangerous to individual liberty than the person who is willing to restrict your's because they really do believe they are doing it for your own good.

That's not an ethical shortcut, that's an ideological stance.

[Jacob]

Same here.  By the same token, the road to hell is paved with ethical shortcuts for the greater good.

Do you think it's a shorter route than ethical shortcuts for personal gain?

[DGuller]

Same here.  By the same token, the road to hell is paved with ethical shortcuts for the greater good.

Do you think it's a shorter route than ethical shortcuts for personal gain?

No, it's just that my point was that a lot of people we consider bad and rotten started out with good intentions (but yes, some were psychopaths to begin with).  It's just that the process of taking ethical shortcuts can rot you, and make you indistinguishably bad from the natural-born scumbags.

[Jacob]

No, it's just that my point was that a lot of people we consider bad and rotten started out with good intentions (but yes, some were psychopaths to begin with).  It's just that the process of taking ethical shortcuts can rot you, and make you indistinguishably bad from the natural-born scumbags.

That's fair enough.

[celedhring]

Same here.  By the same token, the road to hell is paved with ethical shortcuts for the greater good.

Do you think it's a shorter route than ethical shortcuts for personal gain?

No, it's just that my point was that a lot of people we consider bad and rotten started out with good intentions (but yes, some were psychopaths to begin with).  It's just that the process of taking ethical shortcuts can rot you, and make you indistinguishably bad from the natural-born scumbags.

All the King's Men (the 1950s movie) dealt very well with that. It's one of my favorite films.

[Sheilbh]

I agree with Berk too. I liked this piece on 'strong leaders':

The Chris Christie scandal proves it: strong leaders are dangerous

The disgrace of New Jersey's Republican governor shows how political strength can fast become bullying – or worse
Friday 10 January 2014 20.01 GMT 44 comments


Chris Christie (second left) with his deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly last year. 'For a while, Republicans especially liked the fact that Christie seemed more Goodfellas than West Wing.' Photograph: Handout/Reuters
Jonathan Freedland

You can learn a lot about a country from its scandals. In Britain we have Plebgate, revived today by a police officer's admission that he was lying when he said he'd seen Andrew Mitchell raging at protection officers manning the gates of Downing Street. At the heart of the scandal was class, a posh Tory cabinet minister accused of calling salt-of-the-earth coppers "plebs". What it's about now is the disgrace of yet another once-trusted British institution: the police. Both things say much about this country, about how it's always been and how it is now.
In France the scandale du jour is, naturally, sexual, with President Hollande photographed apparently making overnight visits to the home of an actress. To add to the exquisite Frenchness of the affair, the presidential security detail reportedly arrived to pick him up in the morning bearing a bag of croissants. Press disclosure of the romance hints at changing French attitudes to sex and privacy.
Meanwhile in the US, the great scandal rocking the republic centres on ... traffic cones in New Jersey. There's no denying the comic aspects of the trouble now imperilling the state's Republican governor, Chris Christie, and – accounting for wider interest in the story – his presidential ambitions for 2016. It's a tale that could be a Sopranos pastiche, the governor's aides shutting off access to the nation's busiest bridge, creating four days of traffic chaos, just to punish a local mayor who had refused to back Christie's bid for re-election. But this provides more than an amusing insight into the hardball nature of New Jersey politics. It also says something about what we want in our leaders, here as much as in the US – and why we might be getting it wrong.
Start with Christie himself. Political scientists might study his Thursday press conference for years to come. He went long, standing by the podium for a full 108 minutes, deploying a technique familiar to fans of the West Wing. Talk until the reporters are begging for release. That way you can claim you've been candid: after all, you've addressed every possible question.
There are downsides, chiefly the risk of revealing more of yourself than you intended. Christie's performance showed him to be magnificently self-absorbed. He, rather than the people of Fort Lee, whose town was traffic jammed into paralysis, was the real victim, lied to by his "deceitful" staff. To long-serving allies, he all but announced, "You're dead to me". He denied that one key figure, a high school chum, had been anything of the sort. "You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don't know what David was doing during that period of time."
More risky, Christie made the classic error of turning what should be an end to questions into an invitation for more. By insisting he knew nothing of his aides' vengeful traffic scheme – serious because when politicians use government machinery to hurt their enemies it reeks of Richard Nixon – he's put a major bounty on any proof to the contrary.
More dangerous still, he promised that this action was the "exception, not the rule". On that score he is far more vulnerable. Even before "bridgegate", Christie was dogged by stories of punishment inflicted on those who had dared cross him – including a former governor suddenly stripped of police protection and an academic who lost state funding for his research.
This is now Christie's problem: that he will be seen as a bully with a gangster's approach to politics. The irony is that that's not so far from the image the Christie team had been cultivating for the would-be president. Opponents now frantically posting videos of Christie bellowing at and humiliating members of the public did not have to look very hard. Until this week, his team would eagerly post them, on the governor's own YouTube channel, regarding them as a source of pride. They were held to be proof of his tough, no-nonsense style, a refreshing alternative to the timid, focus-grouped political herd. But what was hailed as his greatest strength is now his greatest liability.
And strength is the key word. "Strong leader" is the medal every politician wants on his chest, pinned there by the voters. Those who have succeeded – Thatcher, Blair, Reagan – are those who've been branded strong, while weak is synonymous with failure: step forward, John Major. No matter what else the polls say, Conservative strategists draw comfort from the data showing David Cameron trumping Ed Miliband on the "strong leader" measure.
Yet the Christie affair suggests our desire for strength is a complicated business, that we want it but only up to a point. For a while, Republicans especially liked the fact that Christie seemed more Goodfellas than West Wing, happy to intimidate teachers or tell a disgruntled voter to "keep walking" (unless, one presumes, the voter wanted to get hit). But when that machismo turns into outright abuse of power, at the expense of large numbers of ordinary citizens, it loses its lustre. There is, it seems, a line that separates the muscular, decisive leader from the aggressive bully – a line Christie has crossed, to what could prove his fateful cost.
Perhaps we are already drawing the line in the wrong place. In April, the veteran political scientist and former professor of politics at Oxford, Archie Brown, will publish The Myth of the Strong Leader, suggesting we should cure ourselves of our attraction to the alpha male model of leadership. Once a dominant single individual rules, the way is paved towards "important errors at best, and disaster and massive bloodshed at worst". Brown is struck by Tony Blair's insistence in his memoirs that, when it came to the Iraq war, "the leader had to take the decision" rather than the cabinet. Brown believes this cult of the strong leader has blinded us to the successes of more collegial politicians. He cites Attlee and Truman, noting that one of the latter's greatest achievements was credited to someone else: the Marshall plan.
Strength may be what we look for in a weightlifter, but it's facile to make that the only criterion by which we judge our politicians. Instead, says Brown, we should look for "integrity, intelligence, articulateness, collegiality, shrewd judgment, a questioning mind, willingness to seek disparate views, ability to absorb information, flexibility, good memory, courage, vision, empathy and boundless energy".
While he's doing his professed "soul-searching" Chris Christie might want to run himself through that checklist and see how he's doing. And when the rest of us are next choosing a head of government, perhaps we should do the same.
Twitter: @Freedland

[Jacob]

On the strong leaders point, I definitely have a preference for people who are able to identify, promote, and credit strong subordinates rather than ones who are all about themselves.

[The Minsky Moment]

Strength may be what we look for in a weightlifter, but it's facile to make that the only criterion by which we judge our politicians. Instead, says Brown, we should look for "integrity, intelligence, articulateness, collegiality, shrewd judgment, a questioning mind, willingness to seek disparate views, ability to absorb information, flexibility, good memory, courage, vision, empathy and boundless energy".
While he's doing his professed "soul-searching" Chris Christie might want to run himself through that checklist and see how he's doing. And when the rest of us are next choosing a head of government, perhaps we should do the same.

OK
He's got intelligence, articulateness, shrewd judgment, willingness to seek disparate views, ability to absorb information, flexibility, and boundless energy. 

Integrity, collegiality, a questioning mind - not enough info to go on, but I have no reason to believe he doesn't have those things.

Courage, vision, empathy - very vague terms, no reason to believe Christie is particularly deficient in any of those.

On these measures, Christie looks pretty damn good

(BTW I am not pro-Christie.  Because he misses IMO on something left off the list - supporting good policy).

[CountDeMoney]

I'm shocked, shocked to find New Jersey politics is going on here.

[Admiral Yi]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/politics/christie-scandals/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

The mayor of Hoboken (who, as an added bonus, is pretty damn good looking) is claiming that the Lt. Governor told her Sandy relief funds for Hoboken were conditional on city approval for a development project the governor favored.

For those not already aware, Hoboken's claim to fame is it was the birth place of Frank Sinatra.

[Ed Anger]

Good looking? Yi is off my Christmas card list.

[Admiral Yi]

Hey gimpy, that's the Lt. Gov.

Check out the videos in the left margin.

[Razgovory]

Sucker.

You guys sound like a bunch of basement dwelling teenage goths; you're sure you've figured out how the world is just totally rotten and aren't you awfully clever.

Hey!

[Ed Anger]

Hey gimpy, that's the Lt. Gov.

Check out the videos in the left margin.

I've seen Hoboken chick. Horse face.

[Ed Anger]

Also, her penmanship in her journal is just awful.