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Unusual spectacle in Cleveland: Christie at work as alpha lapdog

Auditioning, apparently, for the role of U.S. attorney general at the GOP reality show in Cleveland on Tuesday, Gov. Christie partied like it was 2009.

Auditioning, apparently, for the role of U.S. attorney general at the GOP reality show in Cleveland on Tuesday, Gov. Christie partied like it was 2009.

That was the year an unlikely yet curiously refreshing county freeholder turned federal prosecutor won the job of Garden State governor with a mash-up of earthy, yet sophisticated, political choptitude.

Four years later, the glow of his talent got tarnished by Bridgegate. It further faded during a steadily less impressive second term that saw him frequently and egregiously AWOL from that unglamorous Trenton job he was elected to do. And then came the governor's too-late, too-little campaign for president, which puttered on until sputtering out, mercifully, in February.

Soon, however, the limelight-loving celebrity hound was back, having reinvented himself as an unlikely if not bizarre new breed of political animal: the alpha-male lapdog.

As such, Christie has obediently followed Donald Trump around, yipping and nipping at whomever the man who dashed his dream of becoming president sics him upon.

On Tuesday morning, Trump dumped into his lapdog's lap the task of attacking those nasty, nit-picking pundits who were daring to assail Melania Trump's purportedly personal yet in parts strikingly unoriginal Monday night convention speech.

Although sheepish is not an adjective often used in connection with Christie, his contrived percentage-of-plagiarism defense of the would-be first lady's oratory lacked conviction as well as plausibility. It was laughable.

Tuesday evening, before an arena audience salivating for red meat, Trump's faithful companion felt truly unleashed. Rewarded with a delicious target - Hillary Clinton - the simultaneously freewheeling and focused political marksman New Jersey first elected seven years ago was back. And was no joke.

Unlike the orgy of self-love that marked his 2012 GOP convention speech, which was supposed to be about Mitt Romney, Christie on Tuesday night praised his master fulsomely while seeking to eviscerate the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

He put Clinton on trial. He prosecuted her as if being secretary of state made her responsible for the sorry state of the world during, since, and perhaps even prior to her four-year term as secretary of state. It was a fiercely delivered litany of political, philosophical, and, arguably, moral transgressions so slashing it might have raised a doubt or two even among the faithful.

Clinton, the governor memorably - if unfairly - declared, was an "awful judge of the character of a dictator-butcher" (Syria's President Bashar al-Assad), a "failure for ruining Libya and creating a nest for terrorist activity by ISIS," and a "failed strategist" pretty much everywhere in a world she made "measurably less safe."

So she was wrong to topple one dictator and wrong not to topple another?

And that was before Christie got around to Clinton and her emails.

"I thought he did a fantastic job doing what Chris Christie does better than anybody else - verbally taking somebody down," says Matt Rooney, a lawyer who runs the influential SaveJersey.com website.

"Making the case that the status quo is unacceptable is what he did in 2009 against [Democratic Gov. Jon] Corzine, and it's what built him a national audience," Rooney adds. "He's going back to what made Chris Christie a star in the first place."

Rooney is a shrewd political observer as well as a friend, and I respected his assessment even before he added, "Many of my insider Republican friends were a little bit squeamish when people were yelling 'guilty' at the governor during his speech."

I found those biggest moments of Christie's night - the crowd-pleasing, call-and-response verdicts on Clinton as "guilty" of appalling crimes against humanity - not only tasteless but tone-deaf.

After all, Christie crony David Samson may be facing serious jail time. Jamie Fox, the governor's former transportation commissioner, has been charged with bribery, and the Bridgegate-related trials of two other former members of his inner circle are looming.

Having governed in absentia for too long, and with too little to show for it other than the statewide shutdown of much-needed transportation projects, as well as the surfside soap opera of Atlantic City, Christie is deeply unpopular with those who know him best: the folks back home.

His abject and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the vice presidential spot on Trump's ticket after Trump usurped his space in the GOP presidential race was not the sort of spectacle that inspires Jersey pride.

And while his return to onstage form may have played well in Ohio, the theatrical pronouncements of "guilty" he so gleefully orchestrated may come back to haunt him in the Garden State.

kriordan@phillynews.com

856-779-3845 @inqkriordan

www.philly.com/blinq