I saw Chris Christie’s presidential announcement speech, and I thought it was pretty good. Not great, but good. But there was one line that made absolutely no sense, and I can’t imagine why he stuck it in there:
Christie: "If Washington and Adams and Jefferson had believed compromise was a dirty word, we'd still be under the crown of England."
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) June 30, 2015
The best response to this line came from National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke:
They started a revolution. https://t.co/8jyRPepjab
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 30, 2015
Now, of course there’s a way in which it makes sense, it’s just a pretty terrible analogy or example of compromise. They had to compromise with each other, but the fact that they were stubbornly unwilling to compromise with the King of England is what created America.
And there’s an obvious reason why he put in there – he wants to please the regular, dopey, low-information voter who keeps opining on polls that they want compromise. But why annoy the rest of us who actually have a reasonable understanding of American history?