It was hard to follow any news last week without running into a steady stream of headlines spouting allegations of wrongdoing by N.J. governor Chris Christie’s administration regarding a traffic jam allegedly planned for political revenge. But this scandal has had much more ink spilled over it than it ever needed to. The fact of the matter is there are so many other stories from across the country that are more worthy of journalists’ time than this story about a traffic jam that happened in September.
Here is the story in a nutshell: The democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., refused to support Republican Governor Christie’s reelection bid. Since Fort Lee is on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, linking the city to Manhattan and the Bronx, delaying traffic on the bridge could have been seen as a sign of political revenge for the mayor’s lack of support.
Christie’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly sent an email message to David Wildstein, a Port Authority official in charge of the bridge and a Christie appointee, that read, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” He replied to the message with a “Got it.” Multiple lanes of the access ramps to the bridge were then closed, leading to four days of traffic gridlock.
After the fourth day, the executive director of the Port Authority ordered the lanes to be reopened in a scalding email to his colleagues. But this was not before four ambulances had been directly delayed due to traffic, and the nation’s busiest bridge was crippled with downright awful traffic problems for days.
Last week, Christie’s chief of staff, former Chief of Staff Kelly, former campaign manager and executive director of the Port Authority, and 16 others were issued subpoenas in relation to the bridge controversy. Christie had dismissed Kelly since the scandal, although he maintained that he had no knowledge of the lane closures.
In truth, the only reason this became a national news story is because Christie is widely seen as a strong contender for the Republican party’s nomination to run for the presidency in 2016. Any opportunity to smear or investigate frontrunners early will always make the press. Since the alleged cause of the lane closures was political retribution aimed at a non-supportive mayor, it became all the more juicy to dissect.
After all the ink that was wasted, most Americans’ perceptions of Christie have not significantly changed. According to an NBC News/Marist poll conducted Jan. 12-14, nearly 70 percent of Americans said the “Bridgegate” scandal has not changed their opinion on Christie, and 44 percent believe he is telling the truth about his own knowledge of the events. About the only negative indication found in the poll was that he trails Hillary Clinton by 13 percentage points in the theoretical matchup in the 2016 presidential race.
But there were so many stories worthy of both readers and journalists’ time, that this scandal did not have to be front-page news for the whole country to read. For instance, it should be quite a big deal that both the House and the Senate were able to compromise and actually able to pass a real budget. The fact that it was only goes to show how the media are obsessed with the political scandal. Would not you have rather read about a community building initiative in your city or town rather than about a bridge hundreds or thousands of miles away?
