I’m no fan of NJ governor Chris Christie. He impressed me early on, but the more I read about his policies and political opportunism, the less I like him.

Then there’s this thing about holding up traffic because he was ticked off that some local mayor who would not support him in his gubernatorial re-election bid.

Just a few days before the Christie lane closing story developed, dubbed BridgeGate, a very critical and damning book had hit the bookstores — online, bricks and mortar, and electronic. Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War was written by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. If Gates is right in his assessment of Obama, the President’s policies and indifference to what was going on in Afghanistan put the lives of soldiers in jeopardy.

Gates and his book have been mostly moved off the front page and Chris Christie is now front and center. Kind of makes me wonder.

Don’t get me wrong, Gates is not squeaky clean in this. Why didn’t he say something publicly or resign if he believed Obama was in over his head and that he and Hillary Clinton were making purely political decisions about an ongoing war?

“On a personal basis, I wish this would have come out while he was in the job,” says Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine general who served as chief of U.S. Central Command. “If the White House was over-controlling, what did he do about it — other than carp about it, after the fact?”

Have you noticed that almost every time one of Obama’s policies goes off the rails or he makes some blunder, the media are there to cover it up or not cover it at all?

Although, in some surprise questioning from CNN’s Don Lemon, he asked Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) “why she believes President Barack Obama’s denial of knowledge regarding scandals, but not Gov. Chris Christie’s.” Cynic that I am, I wouldn’t be surprised that liberals are paving the way for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. Obama is politically passé.

But when a political rival screws up, the story is front-page news all day, every day. How long do you think the media had the Chris Christie lane-closing story? It happened in September of last year. Why release it now? I suspect that the original plan was to release the story when Christie moved up the national political ladder.

I found this paragraph in a New York Times article interesting:

“Mr. Christie denied knowledge of the emails and said his staff was to blame. The growing scandal threatens to tarnish him at the moment he assumes an even larger position on the national stage, as chairman of the Republican Governors Association and an all-but-certain candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016.”

There it is: as “he assumes an even larger position on the national stage.”

The article went on to say, “The emails could represent evidence that government resources were used for political purposes, a potential crime. Mr. Nestor did not respond to a telephone message on Wednesday seeking comment.”

What’s surprising about this? Democrats and Republicans do this all the time. It seems, however, that only Republicans are called on it.

Reminds me of the classic scene in Casablanca when Captain Renault says, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” as a croupier hands him a pile of money from his gambling winnings.

The Chris Christie story would kill two birds with one stone: scuttle Christie’s rise to power and get the Gates’ book off the front page.