Chris Christie’s Contribution

He could normalize attacking Trump for other GOP candidates.

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Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announcing his presidential campaign at a town hall event on June 6, 2023 in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Photo by Carlin Stiehl for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Hey, 

I’ve gone pretty heavy on the philosophical stuff of late. Going by some of the feedback in the comment section and elsewhere, opinions vary on my offerings. That’s fine. Though I do marvel at the way some people clearly hate-read me. I just don’t get the impulse. But that’s a subject for another day. 

Anyway, I feel like a whole bunch of smaller stuff has fallen by the wayside, like sawdust and chips on the wood shop floor. I’m going to try to go a bit more bloggy here. 

Enter Christie

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Comments (395)
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  1. Rob

    "Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants" bold move for Jonah to include this quote...

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    Ben Connelly

    I love the philosophical G-Files, but this was a nice change of pace.

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  3. Eugene Helveston

    Jonah,
    Just keep writing what you want and are good at. Your views on politics and philosophy are equally rich for me. Don't listen to the cranks. Ike demonstrated that less is more when it comes to governing. Thanks for pointing this out clearly. Keep up the good work.
    Gene H

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  4. D Rudy

    Great advice to Biden, to be more like Ike. More appropriately it should have been given to Biden's processor, the antithesis of Eisenhower
    “Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well”

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  5. Chouseworth

    Thanks to Jonah for pointing us to Johnson’s Modern Times. I am enjoying it immensely. Great book.

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  6. Mary Stine

    It seem odd and funny now that any Democrat or newspaper thought they should criticize any hero of WWII,
    let alone a five star general and commander of the Allied Forces who masterminded DDay and held the Allies together.
    Thank God Ike had training in the military to eschew publicity and public adoration. He knew he had a job to do and the best way to do that was to keep the press as far away from his office as possible, while encouraging them to find him on a golf course.
    Harry Truman knew Ike well enough to see through Ike's easygoing charade for the cameras. "He has that big grin" Truman fumed," and everyone thinks he's always happy go lucky..some of us know better"
    Truman knew Ike was serious and hardworking.

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    John A Johnson

    Wonderful -- and I agree about Eisenhower. Korda's book dwells too little on the Presidency, but the qualities Eisenhower displayed as SHAPE were not left at the door when he became President

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    Joe Delanis

    It's okay, I used to hate-read Conrad Black and VDH when both were still at NR.

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  9. Linilulu

    I was a kid when IKE was president. Every mag on the news stand had a cover with Ike golfing and how lazy he was. That was the main thrust of the dem condemnation of the guy. To this day when that same story comes up about how many golf games a president has played I'm always happy about it. It means they are not burning the midnight oil designing new social programs.
    The dem's were thrilled about the freeway system until they found out that it was designed in part for the military. Part of the design was to enable the military to move troops and supplies more quickly throughout the nation. Hey, it was the Cold War.

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  10. R. James

    Considering RFK Jr and Williamson are collectively polling at 25%, flirting with cranks and extremists isn't just confined to the right.

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    1. Jack H Wolf

      No, but I think that is more just a not Biden vote. If a mainstream reasonable candidate came in like a Bennett or Klobuchar, that would shrink considerably.
      I still think the right has the edge on extremists at the moment although the left does better on presumption.

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        Bill Nelson

        A lot of the extremists on the left are normalized, Sen. Sanders as an example. It is the mainstream media who labels who is and is not an extremist. A fun exercise is to compare the platforms of the 2 parties in 1964 and today. Both parties have drifted left but the drift of the democrats has accelerated in this century.

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