Chris Christie has made sudden move to block Tesla motors from the New Jersey market. The details of the move are technical (read: unimportant) but the curious will be satisfied by reading Tesla's blog on the matter. In any case, it amounts to Christie making promises one day and doing the opposite the next. Are we supposed to believe that this was a change of heart? That the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers (a lobbying group for franchise auto dealers) suddenly came up with a more compelling argument?
The Christie administration has been caught and, more surprisingly, exposed for wheeling and dealing quite a bit recently. It's almost of someone doesn't like him very much and it's brought us some revealing political theater. The whole saga is very interesting to me bow that the nation is familiar with the likes of Frank Underwood, who I'm sure would commend Christie for jamming traffic as a punishment, even if he'd "tisk tisk" at the sloppiness of getting caught. I'm hoping that the public has learned a lot from the portrayal of politics in House of Cards and is raising its collective eyebrow, not just because the outrageous hypocrisy of a GOP leader who advocates for open markets when it hurts the working class and supports over reaching regulation when it protects the wealthy.
In the world of House of Cards, power is accumulated by whoever can dig up the most leverage on other people with power. The businessmen's interests are crass: they just want to keep amassing capital. Politicians don't mind a letter salary but aspire instead to an ever higher office. They do this only when powerful people cannot deny them the opportunity (or do not wish to). In a game like this there is no room for ideology, at least at the top, unless you want to tumble down. Colbert (see video below) pithily reminds us not to get too carried away with this vision of politicians as calculating and hyper competent operatives. Certainly most of them are as idiotic and naive as the rest of us, if not more so. But it does seem likely that every gifted, ambitious, sociopathic wouldn't be satisfied as a hedge fund manager. Some of these men and women, or at least their handlers, probably look a lot like Frank Underwood.
I'm hoping that the country is realizing this. And if so, I'm hoping the first instinct for many is to ask who made a deal with Christie and what did they give him? Who could make Christie decide that looking like a hypocrite was better than whatever Tesla could offer? The auto retailers? The oil industry? Party insiders?
Here's hoping that whomever Christie has pissed off will be interested in the media reporting on this, too.
