Don’t let them turn Chris Christie into Richie Incognito

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is riding high today, but how might his confrontational style play under the bright lights of a presidential campaign? That’s the question I sought to answer in my latest column for The Week. And my guess is that the media would first reward him for being “colorful,” only to later crucify him as a “bully.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“If Christie yells at a teacher at a town hall in Iowa, that teacher is going to get a lot of time on television afterwards — in a way that these people [who] get berated in New Jersey don’t,’ says my liberal sparring partner Bill Scher.

 

“This is a good point. In recent years, we’ve seen ‘civilians’ like Joe the Plumber and Sandra Fluke elevated to rock star status. One can easily imagine Christie telling some teacher in Davenport to ‘Do your job!‘ But what happens when she goes on to become a cause célèbre? The media would then parade this “victim” around as an excuse to talk about Christie’s “bullying” and Christie’s “war on women.”

Read the whole thing here. And watch Bill Scher and I discuss this below:

Matt K. Lewis