“The future lies ahead …”

–As predicted in a campaign speech by Thomas Dewey, Republican presidential candidate, 1948. (He won, according to the Chicago Tribune, the most distrusted name in fake news; he lost to Democrat Harry Truman, according to official election results)

The GWB Chris Christie Memorial On-Off Ramp Opera & Oratorio Society presents…

“The Christie Chronicles,” a tragic story worthy of Italian grand opera by Verdi, an opera buffa, better known to the cognoscenti as “Il Fatso.” The humiliation and degradation of the man who would be president. So sad.

Act II

The libretto so far…

There’s a learning curve for being the governor of a great state like New Jersey. And in his short time in office, after only six years, Gov. Wide Load, as he was fondly known, was flunking.

He played hooky too much, away from the office raising money in other states for the national party. His plans for balancing the budget, fixing the pension plans, rescuing the bankrupt Transportation Fund, solving the Atlantic City municipal corruption crisis were all in the category of the dog ate his homework.

As a part-time governor, his legacy included rich people becoming a leading export from the state, as it was, like Atlantis, sinking into its potholed roads and falling off its bridges as they were all about to go down due to managerial incompetence.

Among his other achievements, he had the lowest gubernatorial approval ratings in the state since Gov. Franklin in 1776, who was thrown into prison for having picked the wrong side during the Revolution.

He survived Bridgetgate, as the governor’s partisans called the scandal named after a trusted staff assistant, Bridget Kelly. The lesson to be learned by any rising politician: Don’t email.

His Enormity, as he also was known, had the delusional idea that he wanted to be president. Our absentee governor had built a national reputation as a faux conservative, a man who doesn’t raise taxes while getting things done with the economy. So what if the only business he was good for seemed to be the fast food industry.

As a presidential candidate, the Elephant Man in the commedia troupe of 2016, the clown car of 17 best and brightest Republican hopefuls, he went to the trouble of losing weight. His advisers told him the people hadn’t elected a fat man since William Howard Taft. And he was no William Howard Christie!

He shed his moderate principles for new ones, as if by magic turning into a more conservative- than-thou Republican, appealing to the evangelical vote, all of which some people called “shameless opportunism.” All for naught.

He suffered deprivation, being forced to eat corndogs and poor pizza and untold snacks for his party and country, while staying away from the Statehouse in Trenton and its tangle of insoluble problems, the New Jersey version of Gordian Knots.

But he didn’t let failure get him down.

In 2012, he was the favorite candidate of the party establishment. Power brokers, like Rudy Giuliani, were holding secret meetings in the smoke-filled backroom of the IHOP in Hackensack, making phone calls, raising money, begging His Immensity to announce his candidacy. But, no.

Our Elephant Man said he wasn’t ready to run, or even jog, for president in 2012. His gut decision was to wait for 2016! It showed the dangers of listening to your stomach when it could only be gas.

By 2016, he was ready to come to the aid of the country and the party of Lincoln, the man, the car and the tunnel.

Only 16 candidates away from the Oval Office, he suddenly had the distinction of being the first of the erstwhile candidates to drop out of the race after the bell rang for the end of Round One (New Hampshire Primary), and the first to swear allegiance to Il Donaldini.

His Rotundity saw it as a public duty to help out his old friend and dining companion, a constituent whose golf club at Bedminster, N.J. was to become a national tourist attraction. It was a selfless act to aid a candidate who was coming across as an ignoramus.

Two-ton Christie’s career reached new heights in humiliation, degrading himself on TV news shows, defending the Birther-in-Chief’s factless facts, insane tweets, demented, impossible polices like building a wall which Mexico would pay for. Nobody was better than our boy at making an absolutely inexperienced, unqualified, politically clueless dope sound almost Lincolnesque.

Our governor looked like a character from the Land of the Living Dead standing behind Boss Dumbo as he promised to Make America Great again, even though it already was the greatest. Was he dreaming of the next slice of coconut cream pie?

While pretending to return to his daytime job in Trenton, Gov. Meatloaf volunteered to do pro bono work for the unlikely winner of the 2016 race, heading the so-called transition team, a job like being a stowaway on the Flying Dutchman, since all the experts knew that buffoon Tumpalollapalooza would lose to Crooked Hillary.

While others ran away from him as if he was headed for the nut house instead of the White House, His Lardship stuck to him like the pilot fish waiting for the shark’s next meal.

What could possibly be in it for our boy? Ignoring the fact that the Boss had the reputation of stiffing his workmen and associates, he might be available for the vice presidency.

And so it came to pass that Il Donaldini was the choice of a minority of We the People. As the president of Some of the People All the Time he chose, instead of New Jersey pounds, an Indiana Pence. God works in mysterious ways.

For all the dog’s body work he had been doing, ordering the pizza, picking up the candidate’s dry cleaning, as the fake news New Yorker had been reporting, surely there would be something in the division of the swag for him.

The Scalia seat on the Supreme Court? He was the right weight.

Ex-Gov. Christy Whitman got the Environment Protection Agency in the Bush II administration. Not unreasonable. The people of New Jersey don’t trust air that they can’t see. “Arrividerci Aroma” is the New Jersey state song.

So far, the Elephant in the room was given the task of eradicating opioid addiction. Unlike Ben Carson, who’s in charge of public housing, which he thinks God is against, Rick Perry who’s in charge of nuclear energy, and Betsy De Voss opposed to free education, Christie was assigned something he knows about, addiction, my sources say, Cannoli addiction.

Could it be, as Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee predicted after the George Washington Bridget scandal, “Chris Christie is toast?”

NEXT: ACT III. The Fatman Hasn’t Sung


  

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Marvin Kitman
Dec. 10, 2018

Marvin Kitman’s next book is “Chris Christie’s Expense Account.”

Public Domain Photo of the George Washington Bridge by National Park Service Photographer Jack E. Boucher from Wikimedia Commons.