Chris Christie in the spotlight

Discerning Philadelphians — many of whom could not even name their governor, much less recognize him if he ever appeared in public (which he rarely does) — might point out that Christie’s performances weren’t necessarily funny or even entertaining; unlike Don Rickles, who understood the inherent humor in any word with hard consonants (Rickles always got a big laugh by calling someone a “hockey puck”), Christie relied on pedestrian epithets like “stupid” and “idiot.” But this being New Jersey, his listeners were enthralled. Christie’s town meetings were the equivalent of Chuck Barris's Gong Show, in which a host and audience desperate for public attention willingly made fools of themselves just for a few seconds in the TV limelight.

Nixon at center stage

People go into public service for many reasons, of course, but at least some of them do so because they’re frustrated actors or audience junkies. As the keynote speaker at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Christie referred to himself 37 times before mentioning his party’s candidate, Mitt Romney, whom he mentioned a grand total of six times. But Christie’s case is hardly unique. Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s recent 21-hour anti-Obamacare filibuster included readings from Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, encomiums to White Castle hamburgers, a Darth Vader imitation, and quotations from the reality TV show Duck Dynasty. Sarah Palin leveraged the Alaska governor’s office into a national profile, only to resign as governor when the burdens of office threatened to interfere with her career as a reality TV diva.

As for Richard Nixon — you may not have thought of him in theatrical terms, but he did. In the mid-’60s, after suffering two election defeats, Nixon took Dorothy (“Buff”) Chandler, wife of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, into his confidence to explain why he kept on running. “Buff, I think you’ll understand why I’m going to run, no matter what anybody says,” Nixon told her, according to Chandler’s later recollection. “The reason you’ll understand is because you’ve worked with stage people. . . .I’ve never been center stage, in the leading role. And I’ll never be satisfied until I’m in that leading role.” The explanation for this consummately driven man, you see, lay in neither greed nor power nor ideology nor altruism, but in a consuming hunger for the spotlight.

For Philadelphians, the ultimate audience junkie was the city’s late mayor Frank Rizzo, whose two terms in the 1970s were characterized above all by his seeming insatiable appetite for combat and attention. In 1978, after suffering overwhelming defeat in his disruptive effort to change the city charter so he could seek a third consecutive term, Rizzo told a TV interviewer that he had been warned all along that the campaign was doomed, yet he had plunged ahead anyway: “I had to go on that kamikaze mission, or I wouldn’t be Frank Rizzo,” he explained.

Obama’s reticence

To be sure, the ability to dramatize public issues is a critical tool in any politician’s kit, and the essence of drama, as Governor Christie instinctively perceives, is conflict. Ronald Reagan put his acting background to good use in the White House. President Obama’s reluctance to pick fights to dramatize Obamacare or gun control or gay marriage or the federal budget or damn near anything is one of the disappointments of his tenure (even to those of us who are grateful for his refusal to engage in his predecessor’s sophomoric cheerleading rhetoric, as in “Bring ’em on!” or “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!” or “Bin Ladin, dead or alive!”).

In the 1990s, when Philadelphia’s public schools and police department were both in serious trouble — what else is new? — Mayor Ed Rendell installed two respected outsiders of opposite temperaments. David Hornbeck arrived at the school district in 1994 loaded with dramatic ideas and almost immediately faded into the woodwork. Even his battle cry — “Children Achieving” — seemed designed to put people to sleep (note the absence of hard consonants). As Tom Ferrick astutely observed in the Inquirer at the time, Hornbeck functioned more like a consultant than a superintendent.

By contrast, John Timoney seemed to be everywhere you turned after his appointment as Philadelphia’s police commissioner in 1998. (During a Philadelphia Orchestra children’s concert, Timoney, in full regalia, interrupted a performance of Khachaturian’s Saber Dance to issue a speeding ticket to associate conductor William Smith.) In those days you could make a case that Philadelphia’s public schools were in much better shape than the police department, but their leaders projected the opposite impression.

Two-hour press conference

Last week, when revelations surfaced that his staff had manufactured a four-day traffic jam at the entrance to the George Washington Bridge as an act of political revenge against the mayor of nearby Fort Lee, Governor Christie characteristically refused to duck the issue. On the contrary, he conducted a 110-minute press conference — longer than the longest inauguration address ever delivered by a U.S. president — during which he apologized 20 times. He also described himself as “very sad,” “heartbroken,” blindsided,” and “betrayed.” He painted vivid word pictures to recreate the shattering moment when he first learned of the scandal — his 8 a.m. home workout session and shower, followed by the “heartbreaking” message on his iPad informing him of his aide’s misconduct. He did not paint word pictures of the commuters, schoolchildren, and ambulance passengers in Fort Lee — his taxpaying constituents — who were trapped in nightmare tie-ups of his own staff’s deliberate creation. As any good actor will tell you, this scandal wasn’t about them; it was about him.

Christie explained that he fired his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, for lying to him but never confronted her face-to-face about her lies. “She was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had,” he reasoned. But of course! To an actor, private drama is pointless; public drama is everything.

Christie followed the press conference by taking his motorcade to Fort Lee, where he personally apologized to the mayor and not incidentally caused yet another traffic jam.

To observers like Inquirer columnist Karen Heller, these gestures transformed Christie from “Mr. Tough Guy” to “Mr. Sad Guy.” On the contrary, I would argue that Christie’s behavior has remained consistent from his first day in office — guided above all by a seemingly unquenchable thirst for the spotlight and a philosophy of “Nothing in Moderation.” This is what you would expect of an actor of decidedly limited stage talents— incapable of doing, say, humor, subtlety, introspection, or humility. As the psychiatrist Abraham Maslow put it, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Last month in this space, after I chided George W. Bush for referring to his presidency as just another chapter in his life, Neil Kleinman responded that Bush and his advisers don’t need to confront the consequences of their actions “since they see their actions as little more than theater — the actor playing Hamlet doesn't really die at the play’s end. . . .They don’t see their actions as being truly connected to their identity.” (Click here.)

Granted, if forced to choose between a drama queen like Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and a shrinking violet like Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, I’d take the former. A society with a short attention span needs egocentric leaders capable of arousing passions about civic issues. But must we choose between a Christie and a Corbett? Is there no such thing as a happy medium?