Is Christie Using Nixon’s Playbook? - Elizabeth Drew, NYRB

[ashling]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/feb/12/christie-using-nixons-playbook/

During the 1973 Watergate hearings, Howard Baker, the Republican Senate leader and a close ally of the Nixon White House, asked repeatedly, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” This was and continues to be widely seen as the definitive way to establish a political leader’s innocence or guilt of misdeeds within his administration. And so the question is now being echoed in the case of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, in particular on television—it has even led a national network news broadcast. This is a big break for Christie.

Christie himself has helped set up this question—leading reporters on a merry chase to pin down precisely what he knew when about the infamous closing of two of the three traffic lanes leading into the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, New Jersey for four days last September. According to the received wisdom, if Christie was found to have participated in the plotting or to have known at the time why the lanes were closed, it would make all the difference in assessing his culpability. Deliberately or not, the governor’s fingerprints weren’t on the order to close the lanes, which was given in code—“time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”—by his deputy chief of staff to his special appointee to the Port Authority, who replied, “Got it.”

But this isn’t really the issue. The issue is whether the governor can be held accountable for what happened at very high levels in his administration.

[imthevicar]

1. What POTUS had the sign on his desk that said,

"THE BUCK STOPS HERE!"?

[ashling]

2. Harry Truman

[imthevicar]

3. Thank You,

If it was Good Enough For Harry S. Trueman Then Krispy Kreem The Klown Should Eat it Too.

[rusty fender]

4. In Gov. Krispy Kreme's office, the sign on his desk

reads: The dozen doughnuts stop here!

[imthevicar]

5. First of All, Thank you to whoever Gave me the Heart!

Secondly, The dozen doughnuts stop here....