Not Loyal Enough

Steve Coll compares Chris Christie’s keynote speech to Obama’s in 2004, and finds Christie sadly wanting.

Obama came to Boston as an unknown and left as a rising star. Christie came to Tampa as a rising star and obviously hoped to acquire Obama-like momentum as the Republican Party’s “truth teller,” a more salable alternative in competitive “purple” states than Paul Ryan will be in the next election, if Romney loses this one. (Christie even wore a purple tie.) …

More interesting than the hard truths Christie purported to deliver from the podium in Tampa were the truths he revealed implicitly: that he is unoriginal, divisive, and not loyal enough to be worthy of the platform Romney gave him.

In a way, this piece reminds me of the only thing I think I’ll ever agree with RedState’s Erick Erickson about, when he called out Jon Huntsman for being untrustworthy. His reasoning was that he proved his disloyalty as a person and as a representative of the United States when he was obviously planning to set himself to challenge the president who had appointed him to his ambassadorship; a president who, one presumes, was relying on him to do that job without having to worry about being undermined by an electoral opponent.

This is similar, in that it calls out Christie for failing to do the job to which he was appointed, and instead using it as a platform for his own advancement. The logic goes, I think, that if you can’t do what you’re supposed to do here, of all places, and you look to overshadow and even undermine the guy who put you where you are (in that moment a least), why on Earth should you be seen as worthy of the office you’re blatantly gunning for?