RUTHFULLY YOURS

FORT WORTH — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday received the high-profile endorsement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a stunning blow to the four remaining GOP White House hopefuls who are urgently working to obstruct the billionaire’s path to the nomination.

“I’ve gotten to know all the people on that stage, and there is no one who is better prepared to provide America with the strong leadership that it needs, both at home and around the world, than Donald Trump,” Christie said during a news conference with Trump here in Fort Worth.

The surprise endorsement comes as the Trump campaign continues its muscular charge toward the Republican nomination, bolstered by double-digit leads in national polls. A strong showing in the March 1 “Super Tuesday” primaries, when 11 states will cast ballots in the GOP race, could dramatically expand Trump’s delegate lead.

I have probably interviewed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie more times for more hours than any journalist outside New Jersey. I’ve known him since he started running for governor in 2008. You can understand my shock then when a man who claimed to be serious about public service, who ran on concrete policies and a serious national security platform and who seemed genuinely concerned about an unqualified person becoming president would embrace a know-nothing buffoon like Donald Trump.

Whether damning Trump for ignorance about Vladimir Putin, ridiculing Trump’s idea to ban Muslims coming into the United States or disparaging his other goofy ideas and lack of presidential temperament, Christie made clear that Trump was unfit to be commander in chief. Christie posed as the serious grown-up in this race on national security. That was the essence of his case to the American people.

In fact, after months and months of careful coaching by outside foreign policy experts, his initial gaffes (e.g. “occupied territories” was how he referred to the West Bank) stopped and he became proficient on national security. One former adviser told me he “absolutely” would never have helped Christie had he known he would endorse Trump. He said of Christie’s endorsement, “It’s an absolute disgrace.” It is exactly that, because Christie knows better.

It is deeply sad he would then sweep away months of high-minded speeches to enable a man he knows to be unfit for the presidency to attain that office at a time of such urgency. I wrote recently that Trump’s rise was enabled by many people just “doing their jobs” — the mainstream media, talk show hosts, backbenchers in Congress, etc. But none will be as morally culpable as Christie if Trump succeeds. Why? Because he knows better, and because the threat — and it is a threat — of Trump as commander in chief, or anyone else unfit for that job, was a central motivation for Christie’s run.

How on earth did this happen? Some, like Robert Kagan, think it is solely the result of a prolonged self-poisoning of the Republican Party. A number of shrewd writers—David Frum, Tucker Carlson, Ben Domenech, Charles Murray, and Joel Kotkin being among the best—have probed deeper. Not surprisingly, they are all some flavor of conservative. On the liberal (or, as they say now, progressive) end of the spectrum the reaction has been chiefly one of smugness (“well, that’s what the Republicans are, we knew it all along”), schadenfreude (“pass the popcorn”), and chicken-counting (“now we can get a head start on Hillary’s first Inaugural”). Their insouciance will be stripped away if Trump becomes the nominee and turns his cunning, ferocity, and charm on an inept, boring politician trailing scandals as old as dubious investments with a 1,000 percent return and as fresh as a homebrew email server. He might lose. He might, however, very well tear her to pieces. Clearly, he relishes the prospect, because he despises the politicians he has bought over the years.
The conservative analysts offer a number of arguments—a shifting class structure, liberal overreach in social policy, existential anxiety about the advent of a robot-driven economy, the stagnation since the Great Recession, and more. They note (as most liberal commentators have yet to do) Trump’s formidable political skills, including a visceral instinct for detecting and exploiting vulnerability that has been the hallmark of many an authoritarian ruler. These insights are all to the point, but they do not capture one key element.Moral rot.
Politicians have, since ancient Greece, lied, pandered, and whored. They have taken bribes, connived, and perjured themselves. But in recent times—in the United States, at any rate—there has never been any politician quite as openly debased and debauched as Donald Trump. Truman and Nixon could be vulgar, but they kept the cuss words for private use. Presidents have chewed out journalists, but which of them would have suggested that an elegant and intelligent woman asking a reasonable question was dripping menstrual blood? LBJ, Kennedy, and Clinton could all treat women as commodities to be used for their pleasure, but none went on the radio with the likes of Howard Stern to discuss the women they had bedded and the finer points of their anatomies. All politicians like the sound of their own names, but Roosevelt named the greatest dam in the United States after his defeated predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Can one doubt what Trump would have christened it?