The Dawn of the Integral Age

The right kind of political leader 2010-May-23 at 08:21 PDT

I love Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ).  I think I love him more than any politician in the United States right now, except for the President and Rahm Emanuel.

From Gov. Christie: Fixing NJ finances more important than re-election, 19-March-2010:

Using self-deprecating wit and plainspokenness, Gov. Chris Christie suggested Thursday in a speech to the New Jersey Charter Public Schools Conference that his tough talk and tough love for New Jersey might cost him a second term in 2013.

“I will tell you today what I said throughout the campaign and what I mean from the bottom of my heart: I don’t care a bit about being re-elected. Not one bit. The proof of that should be Tuesday’s speech,” Christie quipped, referring to his budget address to a joint session of the Legislature that has resulted in protests and demonstrations by public employee unions upset over planned cuts to their benefits. “If I cared about getting re-elected, I wouldn’t be doing what I did on Tuesday. I don’t care about being re-elected,” he said.

And just watch this two-minute video of him responding to a reporter about taking a “confrontational tone.”  You can’t get more straightforward than this.  “I came here to govern, not to get re-elected.”  God, I love this guy.  See the guy in the background smiling the whole time?  If I were there, that would be me.

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I mean, one of the guys commenting on this video is already comparing Gov. Christie to Chuck Norris: “Chris Christie once broke every law of physics, at the same time. He was let off with a warning.”  That’s solid.

This is the kind of straight-up honesty we’ll get when term limits arrive.  I’m not saying we’ll get it from everyone, but we’ll see it more and more as part of the political culture in America, from both sides of the aisle, and that will be a really good thing.  These are the kinds of people that can hammer out tough but important agreements on things that move us all forward.