Traffic and Weather

Chris Rasmussen

“I compare [fortuna] to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her.”—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter 25


“Every loyal citizen of the United States owes New Jersey a grudge. The State is corrupt; so are certain other states. . . . The offense which commands our special attention, however, and lifts this state into national distinction is this; New Jersey is selling out the rest of us. . . . If there is such a thing as treason by a state, then New Jersey is a traitor state. My first feeling was that I’d like to see the citizens of this selfish state pickle in the corruption of Hudson County, and Essex, of Camden, and Passaic, and Middlesex, and Ocean [New Jersey] deserves all the punishment we can give her. . . . But. . . I know my feeling about punishing Jersey is wrong: it is too Jersey-like.”—Lincoln Steffens, “The Traitor State,” McClure’s Magazine, 1905

In the annals of American political corruption, the New Jersey scandal now known as “Bridgegate” is something of a puzzle. No one, as far as we know, received any payoffs. Compared to Watergate or Iran-Contra, it seems an almost laughably trivial abuse of power. Rather, the novelty here lies in the episode’s cheap venality: it was prompted by a near-operatic sense of personal pique and a seemingly insatiable will-to-punish, with pols conspiring to snarl automobile traffic in the backyard of a political rival, and then exulting over the truly idiotic achievement of stranding motorists in traffic outside a bridge on-ramp in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Casual connoisseurs of political scandal were taken aback by the sheer, gratuitous pettiness of the thing—especially since it now jeopardizes the political future of Gov. Chris Christie, one of the stars of the Republican Party, who had cannily positioned himself as a no-nonsense problem-solver, sworn to serve the people’s interest amid the partisan rancor and money-drenched inertia of contemporary American politics. The initial Bridgegate dispatches out of New Jersey’s state capital of Trenton have revealed Christie not only to be an intense partisan, but to be a single-issue politician, whose sole concern appears to be the political power of Christopher J. Christie.