By Jeffrey Page

Listening to Chris Christie you might have gotten the impression that the passive voice in English grammar was invented specifically for politicians whose actions have been shown to be less than admirable.

A week after his Oscar-worthy performance as best actor in a press conference (as he fired one aide, severely disrupted the careers of some others, and told us over and over how humiliated and heart broken he was by their actions), Christie was back before the cameras to deliver his state of the state message to the legislature.

During this sequel, Christie did what politicians – Nixon, Clinton, Reagan et al. – do when they’re caught in unpleasant situations and must confess but do not wish to take the blame.

And thus, the passive voice.

Early in the state of the state, Christie felt he had to do a little more breast beating and then get back to business. But he was unable to get himself to say, “I made a mistake” and take the rap. And clearly he wasn’t about to follow up with details of that “mistake.” Yet in shifting blame to his staff, he conceded that he’s not much of an overseer of that staff.

“I made a mistake” is a good, solid declarative sentence. But for Christie it would have been a little too good, too solid, too declarative.

(Cue the passive voice, please.)

“Mistakes were clearly made,” Christie said, which made him look foolish to anyone who’s been following story and who wanted an explanation that starts in the good old first person. Check sources and you find that not only have a huge band of politicians used the passive voice but they all use it to say the same thing: Mistakes were made. Of course there have been some politicians who’d never resort to the artificial silence of the passive voice. For example, can you imagine Harry Truman – the sign on his desk proclaimed “The buck stops here” – announcing “A bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.”

The Christie Show never stops. There was his decision to identify the four days of politically inspired traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge as a “mistake.” In fact, it was not a “mistake.” It was a subversion of the political process, especially that part of the system that identifies someone in Christie’s high office as governor of all the people, not just the ones who voted for him.

Remember, this mess came about in Fort Lee because the Democratic mayor Mark Sokolich – the “little Serbian,” according to another foot-in-mouth by Christie staff when he really is a rather tall Croat – was not about to endorse Christie, a Republican, for a second term.

If Christie had an ounce of integrity, he wouldn’t have spent the last couple of weeks issuing his faux apologies, informing us of his broken heart and his humiliation, and then flying up to Fort Lee to make amends with Mayor Sokolich.

Instead, because of the incredible disruption he and his staff caused with their two-bit terrorism on the bridge, Christie could have addressed the people most immediately affected by the lane closings. Which is to say he could have stood on the pedestrian walkway on the upper level of the bridge and held up a sign reading, “I’m Governor Christie and I apologize for the trouble I caused you during those four days of horrible traffic jams I inflicted on you back in September. Please forgive me.”

But, knowing Christie, the sign’s message would have begun “Trouble was caused.”

Lastly, in case bridge users just didn’t understand how, uh, sincere Christie was at his news conference and in the state of the state, he slammed us over our heads with his supposedly contrite promise that he – actually, he said “we” – would cooperate with “all appropriate inquiries” into the lane closings.

All appropriate inquiries? Has anyone informed the feds that their investigations of the GWB lane closings will be subject to Christie’s definition of “appropriate?”

Tags: Jeffrey Page Chris Christie

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