Hendrik Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza on Chris Christie.

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Hendrik Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza on Chris Christie

Podcast: The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guests: Hendrik Hertzberg, Ryan Lizza
Date: November 8, 2013

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dorothy Wickenden moderates an insightful discussion with Hendrik Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza on the political fallout from the recent gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the evolving landscape within the Republican Party, and the broader implications for both parties leading up to 2016. The conversation focuses particularly on Chris Christie’s landslide re-election in New Jersey, Terry McAuliffe’s narrow victory in Virginia, and Bill de Blasio’s progressive win in New York City.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Election Rundown and Immediate Takeaways

• Gubernatorial Results:
  • Terry McAuliffe narrowly wins in Virginia.
  • Bill de Blasio enjoys a sweeping win in New York City.
  • Chris Christie cruises to a resounding re-election in New Jersey.
• Volatility in National Politics:
  • Elections do not set clear, long-lasting trends; dynamics shift rapidly.
  • Quote:

    “The political situation generally is so volatile. Things change every couple of weeks.”
    — Hendrik Hertzberg (02:13)

2. The Tea Party and Internal GOP Struggles (03:14)

• Establishment Republicans (like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham) are working to reduce the Tea Party influence in Senate primaries, learning from prior cycles where Tea Party candidates caused winnable seats to be lost.
• The Heritage Foundation, led by Jim DeMint, and support from figures like Ted Cruz, fuel these ideological primary challenges.
• Quote:

  “They have to prevent sort of fringe Tea Party candidates from winning primaries and getting defeated narrowly in Senate elections that they should win.”
  — Ryan Lizza (03:27)

3. Chris Christie's Strategy and Personality (04:51-06:00)

• Christie’s win attributed to a pragmatic, non-ideological campaign focusing on leadership and efficacy rather than conservative dogma.
• Christie’s “narcissism” is both evident and, for now, effective with his constituents.
• Quotes:

  “He managed to combine being really appealing and being really narcissistic.”
  — Hendrik Hertzberg (05:09)
  “He doesn’t deal in abstractions. He’s... the beau ideal... of an urban Democrat. He’s a transactional politician... He’s not talking about basic principles.”
  — Hendrik Hertzberg (05:18)

• Potential vulnerability: Christie’s approach may falter on the national stage due to the different dynamics of a presidential primary.

4. Hidden Pitfalls for Christie (06:04-07:09)

• Christie faces looming state budgetary crises due to obligations from state worker reforms.
• His strong post-Sandy leadership—including bipartisan cooperation with Obama and pressuring Republican House leadership—boosted his profile, but other tough governance issues lie ahead.
• Quote:

  “His embrace of President Obama, literal embrace, and him pushing the House Republicans... did battle with Eric Cantor and John Boehner and forced them to put that relief bill on the floor...”
  — Ryan Lizza (06:32)

5. Terry McAuliffe: A Flawed but Victorious Candidate (07:32-09:56)

• McAuliffe, despite ethical questions and a transactional reputation, won largely due to demographic changes in Virginia and the extremism of his opponent, Ken Cuccinelli.
• External groups (NRA, Bloomberg’s gun control group, Tom Steyer on climate change) played significant, but difficult-to-measure, roles in the outcome.
• Quotes:

  “Nobody mistakes Terry McAuliffe for a possible national candidate for president or vice president.”
  — Hendrik Hertzberg (08:29)
  “When you hear that, you know, your G spot lights right up.”
  — Hendrik Hertzberg, humorously describing liberals’ response to McAuliffe’s anti-NRA stance (09:34)

6. What Makes Christie Different? (10:05-11:40)

• Christie’s coalition includes women and minorities, something the national Republican Party has struggled to achieve.
• The difference between moderate and conservative Republicans is largely tactical rather than ideological.
• “Blue state” Republican governors are not rare, and cross-party victories tend to rely on local issues.
• Quote:

  “As soon as Christie enters the primary, he will have to start appealing and taking positions that will alienate many of the groups that he was quite successful with in New Jersey.”
  — Ryan Lizza (11:32)

7. Bill de Blasio’s Win: Progressive Shift or Return to the Norm? (11:51-13:14)

• de Blasio, a true New York liberal with historic leftist credentials, signals a return to form after the centrist eras of Giuliani and Bloomberg.
• His win is less a repudiation of the old guard and more a reversion to the city’s political baseline.
• Quote:

  “This is really a reversion to the mean... the Giuliani years and the Bloomberg years were anomalies for reasons that have now disappeared.”
  — Hendrik Hertzberg (12:16)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Hendrik Hertzberg:

  “The political situation generally is so volatile. Things change every couple of weeks.” (02:13)
  “He managed to combine being really appealing and being really narcissistic.” (05:09)
  “He doesn’t deal in abstractions. He’s... the beau ideal... of an urban Democrat.” (05:18)
  “When you hear that, you know, your G spot lights right up.” (09:34)
  “This is really a reversion to the mean... the Giuliani years and the Bloomberg years were anomalies...” (12:16)

• Ryan Lizza:

  “They have to prevent sort of fringe Tea Party candidates from winning primaries and getting defeated narrowly in Senate elections that they should win.” (03:27)
  “His embrace of President Obama, literal embrace, and him pushing the House Republicans...” (06:32)
  “As soon as Christie enters the primary, he will have to start... alienating many of the groups that he was quite successful with in New Jersey.” (11:32)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Broad Election Results & Tea Party: 01:14–03:14
• GOP Internal Struggles: 03:14–04:51
• Chris Christie’s Persona and Appeal: 04:51–06:04
• Challenges Facing Christie: 06:04–07:09
• McAuliffe’s Ethics and Virginia Dynamics: 07:32–09:34
• Gun Control & Outside Spending in VA: 09:34–10:05
• Christie as a Republican Outlier: 10:05–11:40
• Bill de Blasio and NYC’s Shift: 11:51–13:14

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Conclusion

This episode provides a nuanced portrait of a shifting American political landscape, where both parties are forced to confront internal rifts and demographic realities. The hosts weigh the appeal—and limitations—of strong, self-styled leaders like Chris Christie while also noting how individual races can reflect (or obscure) bigger trends. The tone is analytical with a frequent wink toward political cynicism and New Yorker-style wit.

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Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Thursday, November 7th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. In elections on Tuesday, Terry McAuliffe barely won in Virginia, Bill de Blasio had a massive victory in New York City and Governor Chris Christie cruised to reelection in New Jersey.

[Ryan Lizza]

I did not seek a second term to do small things.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

I sought a second term to finish the job. Now watch me do it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

That was Christie on Tuesday night. Hendrick Hertzberg and Ryan Lissa are here to talk about what voters are telling the two parties. So, Rick, I want to start with you just to get a post mortem. Is there anything sort of broad we can glean about the Tea Party, for instance, and some of these results we've seen?

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

Well, I'm not sure if we can glean it from the results exactly because McAuliffe didn't do quite as well as everyone had been predicted. This guy who was running against him, Ken Cuccinelli, practically beat him, probably would have beaten him with one or Two things working out a little bit differently. The political situation generally is so volatile. Things change every couple of weeks. You know, first it's, oh, the Democrats are a shoo in for 2016 because of the shutdown. Oh, no, the Republicans are a shoe in for 2016 because of the Obamacare rollout. There's a lot more of that to come.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Many people have speculated that McAuliffe was hurt by the Obamacare fiasco.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

I'm sure that's true. If it hadn't been for that, I think he would have won a lot bigger. If the election had been fought strictly on the social issues, which were the big advantage that McAuliffe had. Yeah, he would have won a lot bigger. It didn't seem to matter in New York, but New York is an extremely special case.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yeah, we'll talk about that in one second. I do. I want to just ask Ryan something quickly. First, the big news this morning, Ryan, seems to be that Republicans in The Senate, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, among others, are working to seize control from the Tea Partiers in a very concerted way. Now, could you tell us a little bit about what's going on down there?

[Ryan Lizza]

2014 is a really important year for Republicans in the Senate because Democrats are a little overexposed and they have more senators in vulnerable states than a typical off year election. And so this is the big chance for Republicans. The lesson that they learned in the last two cycles on the Senate side is that they have to prevent sort of fringe Tea Party candidates from winning primaries and getting defeated narrowly in Senate elections that they should win. So that's what's behind the sort of concerted effort. And they're fighting back against Jim DeMint, remember the former senator who now runs the Heritage Foundation. He started this group that supports the sort of Tea Party alternative in the Senate primaries. And it's become a very active, very successful group. Ted Cruz has supported it, and folks like McConnell who would like to be majority leader more than anything else in the world, are trying to organize against that dynamic, which he believes has already cost the Republicans from controlling the Senate and from him being majority leader. I mean, my take on Virginia and New Jersey is, you know, McAuliffe won despite being Terry McAuliffe. And Chris Christie in New Jersey won because he's Chris Christie. In other words, McAuliffe won because of the demographic changes and dynamics in the Virginia electorate. He put together the same coalition that Obama put together in the two times that Obama won Virginia and then Chris Christie won by running a very non ideological campaign. If you Listen to his speech the other night. Almost completely non ideological. Didn't stress any of the usual conservative issues.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Well, it was all about him as far as I could tell.

[Ryan Lizza]

Well, it was about him and leadership and getting things done and pragmatism and working with both sides. He had a couple of lines in there about low taxes and less government, but he also had quite a bit in there about the government helping in the aftermath of something like a storm.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

And he managed to combine being really appealing and being really narcissistic.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yeah, the narcissism was out of control. So Rick, tell me what you find appealing about him.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

He doesn't deal in abstractions. He's in many ways a very old fashioned politician. He's the beau ideal, in a way, of an urban Democrat. He's a transactional politician. He's not talking about basic principles. You know, yes, he gives a nod to small government, he gives a nod to keeping taxes down. But what he really talks about is doing stuff. He doesn't necessarily say what that stuff is, but that was what he hammered away on. Get things done. Get things done. Can do it. I, I, I, that narcissism is appealing as long as the public shares that view of him. So when you're listening to him praise himself, you think, yeah, yeah. But the minute he gets into a national campaign, it's going to be a slightly different dynamic.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Ryan, I want to ask you because I was talking to a friend yesterday who actually covers New Jersey politics and she reminded me that the state budget is going to implode before 2014 because huge payments are going to come due for his reform of state workers. Pen. And also before the hurricane, Christie was actually considering not running for reelection because some of this is going to be so politically damaging.

[Ryan Lizza]

When I think before the hurricane, remember, he was not riding high. I mean, the campaign ended with his leadership during the hurricane and his gamble, obviously a gamble that paid off. But his embrace of President Obama, literal embrace, and him pushing the House Republicans, Remember earlier this year when the House Republicans pulled a bill off the floor to fund reconstruction efforts right. For the Northeast after the storm and Chris Christie made a huge public issue of it, did battle with Eric Cantor and John Boehner and forced them to put that relief bill on the floor, which a lot of conservatives in the House thought was bloated, and it passed with Democratic votes. It's one of the bills that really damaged Boehner with his conservatives.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

Christie plays a long game. It's very interesting in that way. He's a little bit Like Obama, the way he behaved before the 2012 election when he did things over and over again that made it prohibitively unlikely that he would end up with a vice presidential nomination. All those things that he did then are part of what is rocketing him so high right now.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Well, and Ryan getting back to Virginia for a second because McAuliffe has some problems of his own. Haven't there been persistent questions about his ethics, for one thing?

[Ryan Lizza]

Yeah. It's funny that they're both these sort of old fashioned politicians that are all about transactional politics, cutting deals. Right. New Jersey has a very unusual political, sort of old fashioned political system that if Chris Christie is president, he's not going to find a similar system here in Washington. And that strategy is just not going to work. I mean, they don't even have earmarks anymore in Congress. He can't even give Bridges out to Democrats if he wanted to down here. And McAuliffe, of course, came up through the fundraising world and then traded in on his connections in the fundraising world and made lots of money in the private sector. That was all well ventilated in the Virginia campaign. And it was didn't damage him as much as I think a lot of people thought it would, partly because his opponent was so extreme, especially on social issues. That is a real turnoff to a lot of much more moderate women in Virginia.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

Nobody mistakes Terry McAuliffe for a possible national candidate for president or vice president. He has risen.

[Ryan Lizza]

Clinton McAuliffe is a good ticket for.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

Today if you're a Republican. Yeah.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Well, I want to ask you about something else, Ryan, because the New Republic had an interesting piece reporting that gun control played a role in McAuliffe's victory and that had been sort of underreported, reported and pointed out that the NRA had spent a lot of money against McAuliffe, but Bloomberg's group, among others, had spent, I don't know, three times as much. Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

So I don't know if that is accurate or not because also that, you know, Tom Steyer's group, that guy that I wrote about, he spent a lot of money on climate change also. He was a big player in Virginia. So you had a lot of big outside groups and it's always hard to figure out how much effect they had, frankly. In the weeks leading up to the campaign, there were stories that said because Terry McAuliffe's lead was so large and it seemed so sure that he was going to win that some of the gun reform groups came in because they wanted to be able to claim after the election was over that they had a huge victory. So I don't know if that dynamic is true or not or if there's some evidence that shows that they genuinely moved the needle.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

And that was a big base builder, sort of for McAuliffe to kind of imitate FDR saying, I welcome their hatred. You know, I don't give a damn that I got an F rating. If you're a liberal, you know, Northern Virginia upper middle class person who's a little bit worried about the sleaze and that this guy really isn't one of us and all that stuff, when you hear that, you know, your G spot lights right up.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So that would. That would not play as well on the national stage, would it?

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

It might. It might play pretty well on the national stage, yeah. I don't see why not. But it's not going to be Terry McAuliffe who plays it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I want to go back to New Jersey for a second. Time magazine's current cover.

[Ryan Lizza]

Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard about it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yeah, I'm sure you have. The headline is the elephant in the Room, which is rather unk and then goes on to the subhead of something about how Chris Christie can help save the Republican Party. It is interesting, Ryan, that he won impressive numbers of women and minorities, which has eluded the Republican Party nationally. Give us a quick rundown of his politics, because he seems to. He's a fiscal hawk, he's a social conservative. He embraced Obama after Hurricane Sandy, but he agrees with the Tea Partiers on abortion and small government. So what does this all add up to?

[Ryan Lizza]

The truth is, when you start scratching the surface, there's not that much ideological disagreement in the Republican Party between the people who are tagged as moderates and the people who are tagged as conservatives. I mean, so much is about tactics and strategy on the numbers he ran up. I looked at this the other day. There are 11 Republican governors who are governing states that Obama won in 2012. So it's not like Chris Christie is the only governor who won in a blue state. It's not that uncommon. There are five Democrats who are governing red states. I mean, this does happen, happen. It's not that unusual for gubernatorial elections to be decided on more local issues and for these guys to have crossover appeal. One, you know, iron law of national politics is that as soon as Christie enters the primary, he will have to start appealing and taking positions that will alienate many of the groups that he was quite successful with in New Jersey. And I have no doubt that that's the dynamic that he will face.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

That's what happened to Romney. Yeah, that's what did Romney.

[Ryan Lizza]

That's what happened to Barack Obama. Remember how many conservatives loved Barack Obama in the early. I mean, almost people forget, but he had lots of crossover appeal.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Hard to remember. Before we go, Rick, I want you to talk a little bit about New York because this is a, you know, major change in the city. We've had Bloomberg for 12 years. We now have elected a new mayor who is very, very different. Most of our listeners outside, especially outside New York, don't know anything about the Bill de Blasio. So tell us a little bit about him and how different his politics are going to be.

[Hendrick Hertzberg]

Well, he's a great big old New York liberal, even going back so far as being an old pro Sandinista activist. But this is really a reversion to the mean. I mean, the last 20 years, the Giuliani years and the Bloomberg years were anomalies for reasons that have now disappeared. So it's not as if de Blasio's victory is like a big rejection of the Bloomberg legacy or a big embrace of an enormous progressive agenda. It's just that the special circumstances have disappeared. There's no huge crime problem driving people to the right. There's no billionaire able to purchase an election. We're back to the Democrat wins, the Republican loses. And after all, de Blasio would not be there if Anthony Weiner hadn't messed up. I'm morally certain that if Wiener had kept his nose clean, he would be mayor right now or mayor elect.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Okay, thank you both. Hendrick Hertzberg is a senior editor and political essayist, and Ryan Lizza is the Washington correspondent. This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

[Ryan Lizza]

You can subscribe to this and other free New Yorker podcasts in the itunes store. The weekly audio edition of the magazine is available at audible.com Subscribers can read the magazine online at new yorker.com and also in the tablet edition on the iPad and the Kindle Fire.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid]

America is changing, and so is the world.

[Ryan Lizza]

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. hi.

[Ryan Lizza]

I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.

[Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid]

Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Ryan Lizza]

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