In 2004, a then young State Senator and
United States Senate candidate from Illinois named Barack Obama stepped up to
the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Boston and delivered a
stirring keynote address that catapulted him from a place of relative obscurity
to one of national prominence.
His party was on it’s way to nominating
an unpopular, flip-flopping elitist, politician in Massachusetts Senator John
Kerry. Joining Kerry on the ticket was
young-gun then Senator John Edwards (who’s life has taken some interesting
turns in the past eight years). Kerry
was quickly defined by President Bush’s team and never regained his footing in
the race; he lost to the fairly unpopular incumbent.
Four years later, then Senator Obama ran
for President; he told us we were the ones we’d been waiting for, that we
should be audacious enough to hope, and that there is no red and blue America
just a United States of America.
Fast forward to 2012. The Republican Party will soon nominate an
unlikable, elitist, flip-flopping former Massachusetts Governor in Mitt
Romney. And Romney has of course tabbed
his party’s ultimate young-gun in Representative Paul Ryan for the Vice
Presidential slot.
With Romney’s high unfavorable ratings
and recent decision to fundamentally alter his campaign’s strategy by choosing
Ryan, he seems likely to be defeated by the unpopular, but likable President
Obama.
Many pundits have written about the
parallels between the 2004 Presidential election and this one. And conservatives ought to hope they’re wrong
about all the parallels but one--and it’s a little discussed parallel. You see
conservative firebrand and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will deliver the
keynote address at this year’s Republican National Convention in Tampa.
And Christie is a man with a compelling
story to tell.
Most importantly to Republicans, he has
balanced two budgets after inheriting an eleven billion dollar deficit. He has made the tough choices on big issues
like state pension reform, and has done this with the wind blowing firmly in
his face—New Jersey’s State legislature is 60% Democratic. He currently holds a
57% approval rating in the deeply blue state of New Jersey (Obama carried it
57%-42% in 2008 and the last time it went Republican in a Presidential election
was 1988).
Governor Christie touts these accomplishments
with great effectiveness by simply being honest with the people. He explained the dire straits his state’s
fiscal house was in and said in essence, we have to do something about this.
Christie treats the American people like
adults and doesn’t soft-pedal much of anything, which can be a political
blessing and a curse; however, with the irresponsible turn our country’s
governing has taken in recent years it is beginning to look more and more
appealing.
Big donors and many prominent
Republicans were basically on their hands and knees begging him to challenge
Romney for the Republican nomination for President last fall and continued to
into the winter.
But the time wasn’t right for Christie
in 2012. He certainly has some issues to
deal with. The largest one being his
weight, Christie is obese and in the age of television and with our countries
recently found greater emphasis on health, it’s unlikely we’ll ever have
another William Howard Taft in office (you know, the guy who got stuck in the
bathtub). He needs to shed some weight before he reaches the pinnacle of
American politics.
And though it can often be one of his
greatest assets, Christie has a penchant for being overly blunt. Telling residents to “get the hell off the
beach” last summer when severe weather was heading his state’s way isn’t
exactly Presidential.
He can also come off as a bit of a
bully. Firing back a little to hard and
personally at protest tinged questions at his town halls.
And there’s the infamous moment on New
Jersey public television when he got hot under the collar after a woman asked
him why he doesn’t send his children to public schools. An irritated Christie responded by telling
the woman it’s none of her business where he sends his children to school.
Finally, a combination of the two big
issues occurred earlier this summer when Christie fired back at a heckler on
the Jersey shore, ice-cream cone in hand, by saying, “You’re a real big shot; you’re a real big shot shooting your mouth
off.”
These
troubles aside, if Christie strides to the podium later this month and tells
his story in New Jersey in a compelling way, conservatives will be drooling the
way liberals were in 2004 after their keynoter delivered his speech. Democrats saw Obama as the future of their
party, and they were right.
With their
party currently in disarray, Republicans can only hope the same happens with
Christie after his address. For a party
that’s lacking leadership and compromise, it would be a wonderful thing if they
embraced a leader who uses those two words to explain his very success.
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