Talk about masks!  Chris the Lachrymose.  The Tearful, the Tragic.  The Woeful, the Penitent Comic, the Blubberer.  The “I am not a Bully.”

We had forewarning of this, of course.  Remember the special election?  This poem of mine was published by New Verse News, in slightly different form, in June 2013.

Chris Christie

Friends, Americans, countrymen, hear me out.

I come to praise Christie, not condemn him.

The good that men do lives on after them,

While their mistakes often die with them.

He is an honorable man, who has at heart

The welfare of the people.  His critics cry,        

He has ambition.  But did he not embrace

Even Obama, prince of the other party,

After Sandy?  Ambition should be made

Of sterner stuff.  Did he not excoriate –

Excoriate, I tell you – John Boehner,

Leader of his own party?  This is not

A man who puts his own ambition Ahead

Of the people’s weal.  His enemies complain

He’s costing the state $24 million

For two special elections to fill Lautenberg’s

Senate seat.  To save the people’s money,

Did he not cut pensions and health benefits,

Slash $8 million in college tuition subsidies,

$10 million in after-school programs

And $12 million more in charity care?

Would a man of overweening ambition so flaunt            

The common people’s needs?  Just to “win big”

In his own re-election and impress the fat cats              

Who dominate presidential politics?

Chris Christie, my friends, has the people’s good

At heart, and he is an honorable man.