This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

We need Chris Christie now more than ever.

Why?

Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and once a strong supporter of Donald Trump, is now running for president.

And, so far, he is basically the only Republican who has been willing to go after Donald Trump.

Good for Christie.

By the way, a friend of mine asked me the other day why I still use my blog to write about Trump after my pledge several months ago not to do so.  Well, the answer is that, like Trump, I lied.

Better put.  I think Trump is such a threat to the nation that he deserves to be called out, even though my voice is only a small one out in the sticks in Oregon.

So, I aver, this blog is not about Trump.  It is about Christie.

In the New York Times a couple days ago, here is how columnist Frank
Bruni wrote about Christie:

““”“Chris Christie made a complete fool of himself back in 2016, fan-dancing obsequiously around Donald Trump, angling for a crucial role in his administration, nattering on about their friendship, pretending or possibly even convincing himself that Trump could restrain his ego, check his nastiness, suspend his grift and, well, serve America.

“But then Christie, the former two-term governor of New Jersey, had plenty of company.  And he never did style himself as some saint.

“It’s all water under the George Washington Bridge now.

“The Chris Christie of the current moment is magnificent.  I don’t mean magnificent as in, he’s going to win the Republican presidential nomination.  I don’t mean I’m rooting for a Christie presidency and regard him as the country’s possible salvation.

“But what he’s doing in this Republican primary is very, very important.  It also couldn’t be more emotionally gratifying to behold.  He’s telling the unvarnished truth about Trump, and he’s the only candidate doing that.  A former prosecutor, he’s artfully, aggressively and comprehensively making the case against Trump, knocking down all the rationalizations Trump has mustered and all the diversions he has contrived since his 37-count federal indictment.”

Bruni wrote that none of the other candidates comes close to what Christie is doing.  For the most part, he adds, “they’ve gagged themselves or decided to play laughable word games about who Trump is, what he has done, and what he may yet do.”

Here are other paragraphs from Bruni’s column, which I could have placed in the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering that I run.  But, I decided the Bruni words were worth highlighting on their own.

• Christie is to DeSantis (Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and presidential candidate) what a Roman candle is to a scented votive. He explodes in a riot of color.  DeSantis, on his best days, flickers.
• Christie’s prosects are about the hugely valuable contrast to other Republican presidential candidates that he’s providing.  The health of American democracy hinges on a reckoning within the Republican Party, and that won’t come from Democrats saying the kinds of things that Christie is now.  They’ve been doing that for years. It’ll come — if it even can — from the words and warnings of longtime Republicans who know how to get and use the spotlight.
• Did you see Christie’s CNN town hall last week?  Have you watched or listened to any of his interviews?  He’s funny.  He’s lively.  He’s crisp.  And he’s right. Over the past few weeks, he has described Trump’s behavior as “vanity run amok.” Trump himself is “a petulant child.”
• At the town hall: “Trump is voluntarily putting our country through this.  If at any point before the search in August of ’22 he had just done what anyone, I suspect, in this audience would have done, which is said, All right, you’re serious?  You’re serving a grand jury subpoena?  Let me just give the documents back,’ he wouldn’t have been charged.  Wouldn’t have been charged with anything even though he had kept them for almost a year and a half.”

If Christie qualifies for the Republican primary debates, a question has emerged about what he will do when asked what he will do about the required pledge that he support whoever winds up getting the party’s nomination.

“He has,” Bruni writes, “apparently found a solution that’s suited to Republicans’ willful and nihilistic captivity to Trump, the stupidity of the pledge and the stakes of the race:  He’ll sign what he must and later act as he pleases.”

Chris Christie, superhero?   No.  He has his own supersize vanity.  He is arguably playing the only part in the crowded primary field available to him.  

As for other Republican candidates – Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley – they appear to be so concerned about offending Trump supporters that they won’t criticize him.

So, we are left with Christie – and I say do more truth-telling in this presidential campaign.  Trump deserves it.