Civility | Signup
Leadership Involves Making Principled Compromises
Is Chris Christie the political leader closest to the center?
Jena McGregor, Washington Post - Speaking at the Brookings Institution Monday, Chris Christie said something few might expect to hear from the same man who lost his temper with a constituent at the Jersey Shore last week, recently called a reporter “the idiot over there” and bluntly told another voter where he sends his children for school is “none of your business.”
Leadership, said the New Jersey governor and buzzed-about VP contender, “is about nuance.”
While the word may have sounded odd coming from the brash-talking Christie, this is hardly the first time Christie has taken on the role of politician-as-leadership-sage. Between the bluster and the bombast, Christie seems to enjoy—and gets plenty of attention—whenever he starts pontificating about leadership and how much it’s missing in today’s world.
For instance, at an American Enterprise Institute speech in February 2011, he said “I believe that part of that leadership is understanding, articulating, and believing in that which is special and unique in the people that you serve” as well as “leadership in my opinion is not about waiting” and “leadership today in America has to be about doing the big things and being courageous.”
At an event sponsored by this site and the Harvard Kennedy School last December, he said “the challenge of that type of leadership is that there’s often, almost always, a boulevard between getting everything you want and compromising your principles.” [more]
Gov Chris Christie: Washington’s Failure to Compromise Is Failed Leadership
