By Da Chipster
Recently, I had to explain to a youngling why every political scandal – real, imagined or manufactured – had “-gate” as a suffix. All you fine folks at this here shop are like me in one of two ways 1) older than dirt or 2) historically literate. As such, you know the answer. But when I explained this etymology, the only comment in return was “yes, but what did WATER have to do with it?”
Water? It’s in the tears I weep for my country’s future.
All this was in aid of Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate,” which is Nixonian in nature if not in scope. It features expendable staff, enemy paybacks, earnest self-investigations, and an egotistical principal who scoffs at the very mention of the thing, as if it were some third-rate burglary. Haldemann, Mitchell, Dean, Hunt, Liddy – they can all be found in this opera bouffe, although diminuendo and transposed to a minor key.
But it was one early Christie comment attempting to bluff his way past the 2016 off-ramp – that he was out there placing the cones – that clued me in: this is not Nixon-style politics. This is CHICAGO-style politics.
You may remember me mentioning my uncle, Jimmy “Barstool” Grobnik, who got the nickname because he is short and round and can always be found in the corner tavern. He got into the Hachecristo family business of “working” on Chicago street crews by marrying my Tia Lucha, and spent many a summer in an orange vest, posing as a traffic barrel with very skinny legs.
So I called Uncle Barstool, who knew where I was going right away.
“It’s like I always toldja,” he said, the accent as crisp as the pickle spear on a Chicago-style hot dog. “Dis is how politics useta work. Da Boss, he’s got da clout. You back him? Yer set! You cross him? It’s yer own lookout. Dis Christie fella, he’s old school, a real t’rowback. Mare Daley, da greatest mare of da greatest city ever, he would unnerstan’ dis guy.”
Patronage – the spoils game – is what kept this country humming for the first 200 years of its existence. The ability to award jobs to your allies and supporters was just the beginning. Who owes bribes, who collects bribes, who gets a piece of the bribes – all that was there too. But clout was about more than bestowing largesse. It was also about the double-cross, and retribution. Payments and paybacks. Was it wrong? Yes, but it was a step up from the older days in Machine politics, when the Outfit decided such things, and the retribution was more… permanent. Cement contracts, or cement shoes.
New Jersey – not Chicago – is the last bastion of Machine politics. And Chris Christie by dint of his outsized personality had adroitly become one of the last great political bosses. He would not only have been at home in the old days, he would have thrived. It’s not that he was born bad…
Just too late.
