This Is What Leadership Looks Like

Why is Chris Christie above fifty percent voter approval after eight months of courageously and unapologetically laying the fiscal conservative smack down in a heretofore hopelessly corrupt "blue" rathole like New Jersey? In a word, leadership. Treating the people of the Garden State like adults instead of children. And "bullying," if you will, the people who have been treating them like children. It's earned the Jersey Guv more than just approval - it's earned him respect.

Let's recycle the post title again: This is what leadership looks like. Especially when one of the screw-ups is your own:

Subsequent to this presser, Double-C learned that his education commissioner, one-time Jersey conservative rising star Brent Schundler, had not, after all, verbally supplied the Feducrats with the correct numbers on that one sheet of paper as Schundler had assured the Governor he had. Rock-and-a-hard-place spot for him, isn't it? Does he circle the wagons? Make excuses? Whine at the regime for its gotcha-ism?

Nope:

Governor Chris Christie, reacting swiftly to a brewing crisis over a failed federal grant application, has fired Department of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler.

Schundler was let go by Christie this morning following the release of a video by the federal Department of Education that contradicted Schundler’s assertion that he provided federal Race to the Top grant application reviewers with correct state aid numbers after an error in the documents was revealed.

“I was extremely disappointed to learn that the videotape of the Race to the Top presentation was not consistent with the information provided to me by the New Jersey Department of Education and which I then conveyed to the people of New Jersey. As a result, I ordered an end to Bret Schundler’s service as New Jersey’s Education Commissioner and as a member of my administration,” Christie said in a statement issued at 12:30 p.m. today.

There was nothing else Governor Christie could do if honesty, integrity, and accountability were to be upheld. Make no mistake, this fiasco isn't a brick in Double-C's road to glory. But even in a setback, he is displaying the same level, quality, and intensity of leadership that he has brought to Trenton ever since he took office. And the people of New Jersey will respect that as well.