{"id":8779,"date":"2011-02-25T13:34:15","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T18:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8779"},"modified":"2011-02-25T13:44:22","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T18:44:22","slug":"the-secrets-of-chris-christies-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8779\/the-secrets-of-chris-christies-success\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secrets of Chris Christie’s Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a characteristically well written piece Matt Bai identifies several political skills wielded by New Jersey\u2019s dynamic governor.\u00a0 Among them, Chris Christie\u2019s ability to humanize mundane issues<\/a> like pension policy stand out.<\/p>\n

The theme of the week was pension-and-benefits reform, and in his introductory remarks, Christie explained the inefficiency in the state\u2019s health care costs not by wielding a stack of damning statistics, as some politicians might, but by relating a story.<\/p>\n

When he was a federal prosecutor, Christie told the audience, he got to choose from about 100 health-insurance plans, ranging from cheap to quite expensive. But as soon as he became governor, the \u201cbenefits lady\u201d told him he had only three state plans from which to choose, Goldilocks-style; one was great, one was modestly generous and one was rather miserly. And any of the three would cost him exactly 1.5 percent of his salary.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018You\u2019re telling me,\u2019 \u201d Christie said he told the woman, feigning befuddlement, \u201c \u2018that no matter which one I pick, the good one or the O.K. one or the bad one, I\u2019m going to pay 1\u00bd percent of my salary?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Yes.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I said, \u2018Then everyone picks the really good one, right?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Ninety-six percent of state employees pick the really good one.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich led me to have two reactions,\u201d Christie told the crowd. \u201cFirst, bring those other 4 percent to me! Because when I have to start laying people off, they\u2019re the first ones!\u201d His audience burst into near hysterics. \u201cAnd the second reaction was, of course I would choose the best plan,\u201d Christie said, \u201cand so would you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bai goes on to report seeing Christie\u2019s mixed race audience nodding in agreement that public employees should be required to pay more for the better plan.\u00a0 As Christie says, this isn\u2019t rocket science, just common sense.\u00a0 His ability to relate hard truths in understandable terms is a unique gift shared by the likes of Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, JFK, and FDR.\u00a0 Not bad company for a guy from New Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a characteristically well written piece Matt Bai identifies several political skills wielded by New Jersey\u2019s dynamic governor.\u00a0 Among them, Chris Christie\u2019s ability to humanize mundane issues like pension policy stand out. The theme of the week was pension-and-benefits reform, and in his introductory remarks, Christie explained the inefficiency in the state\u2019s health care costs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,1034,2438,2437,410,2439,1588,456,419],"class_list":["post-8779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-chris-christie","tag-ethos","tag-matt-bai","tag-new-jersey","tag-pathos","tag-pension","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8779"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8782,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8779\/revisions\/8782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}