You might expect New Jersey?s governor to win plaudits from a right-leaning mainstream media columnist. But what about Nancy Gibbs, the TIME scribe who?s hardly a reliable right-winger?
Gibbs offers Chris Christie kudos in her latest column, for the same reason that others have praised him: his willingness to tackle sacred cows in fixing the Garden State?s budget problems:
In an emergency, people don’t want to be soothed; they want to be saved. But bombs and fire concentrate the mind more than charts and graphs do. So what does that mean for American leaders facing epically dangerous deficits? It’s tempting to see in New Jersey Governor Chris Christie a Churchill for our times. He is Governor Wrecking Ball, cutting teacher pay, reducing state-worker pensions and killing infrastructure projects. And he’s treated like a rock star.
But Christie is an anomaly.
