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If you want to run New Jersey or the United States or a Fortune 500 company, just take a look at the last four years in Trenton, Gov. Chris Christie told a friendly crowd of powerful business leaders today.
The Republican governor was the first guest speaker at the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council conference, a two-day gathering of 100 chief executives that will also hear from President Obama and federal cabinet secretaries tomorrow.
For Christie, a popular figure among the business and Wall Street elite, the event served as a victory lap after his re-election in New Jersey earlier this month — and as a chance to remind an influential group of potential donors about his record of working with Democrats.
"If I walk away with 70 percent of my agenda, New Jersey is 70 percent better than it would have been otherwise," Christie said amid a 30-minute onstage interview with the Wall Street Journal's top editor, Gerard Baker.
Washington, by contrast, is being run by "absolutists" who failed at the basic job of keeping the government running, he said, taking digs at everyone from Obama to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for the recent shutdown of the federal government.
Although he tangoed around questions about a potential run for the presidency in 2016, Christie made sure the CEOs knew about his successes as governor and his victory margin among Hispanics and African-Americans in New Jersey.
And when one CEO in the audience asked him how Republicans could beat Hillary Rodham Clinton if she jumps into the 2016 presidential race, Christie said the way to win any national race is by steering clear of "focus-group-tested" speeches.
"You need someone who’s clear, direct and authentic and says what they think," Christie said.
The governor got a warm introduction from Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corp., a media empire that includes the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
"It’s a great thrill tonight to have my friend, the charismatic Chris Christie here, who just had this overwhelming victory in his home state of being re-elected as governor," Murdoch said.
Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, said Murdoch’s public show of support for the governor could go a long way in Republican circles that are frustrated by a string of losses in national races in recent years.
Christie, whose national profile is set to rise higher when he takes the reins of the Republican Governors Association this week, will likely keep getting high-profile speaking invitations, Harrison added.
A group of powerful business leaders and Wall Street representatives pressed Christie to run for president last year, and they have also given open-handedly to his two campaigns for governor. The governor’s wife, Mary Pat Christie, is a managing director at a Park Avenue private equity firm.
‘They want someone who can actually win," Harrison said. "For Murdoch, I think he does present an appealing candidate. In my mind, that represents a feather in the cap for Christie because of the influential outlets that he has."
Christie last night went hard after Obama’s health-care overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, which has had trouble in its roll-out because of widespread problems with a new online marketplace for consumers.
Christie, who agreed this year to expand New Jersey’s Medicaid program under the law, today called it unsalvageable and the "most extraordinary overreach of government power in the history of our country."
Pressed by Baker to say what he would do different, Christie said he couldn't give a comprehensive answer in the 16 minutes he had left onstage. At another point in the interview, he also chastised Washington Republicans for letting their opposition to the law paralyze the federal government for two weeks.
The top U.S. military commander, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke after Christie and agreed that leaders need to be straight shooters but also need a dose of "humility."
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