New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie announces presidential bid

Washington: Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, which has one of the largest Indian-American population in a US state, on Tuesday launched his bid for president, joining the already crowded presidential race of his Republican party. Christie blamed the dysfunctional leadership in the nation’s capital – the Congress and the White House – for the poor state of affairs of the United States while announcing his much awaited announcement. Christie, who was among the few governors to have met the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he visited the US in September last year said the dysfunctional leadership in Washington has led the US to weak leadership around the world. [caption id=“attachment_2320358” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. AFP[/caption] “Our friends can no longer trust us and our adversaries no longer fear us. This weakness and indecisiveness in the Oval office has sent a wave of anxiety through our country but I’m here today to tell you that anxiety can be swept away by strong leadership and decisiveness to lead America again,” Christie said. A large number of Indian-Americans were present in Livingston in New Jersey, where Christie made the announcement making him the 14th Republican leader to enter the crowded presidential race for the party. Among those who have announced the candidature for presidential elections include Indian-American Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana. Christie used the occasion to lash out at both the leadership in the Congress and the White House. “We have a President in the Oval office who ignores the Congress and a Congress that ignores the President. We need a government in Washington DC that remembers you went there to work for us, not the other way around,” he said. “And both parties have failed our country. Both parties have stood in the corner and held their breath and waited to get their own way, both parties have led us to believe that in America, a country that was built on compromise, that somehow now compromise is a dirty word,” the Republican leader said. Christie said the US needs to get its economy growing again at four per cent of greater. “The reason we do is because we have to make this once again the country my mother and father told me it was. That as hard as you work, that’s as hard and high as you’ll rise,” he said. “That’s not the case anymore. We can’t honestly look at our children and say that to them because we have an economy that is weak and doesn’t present them with the same opportunities that Mary Pat and I were presented with in the mid-1980s when we graduated from college,” he added. Christie said after seven years of a weak and feckless foreign policy run by Barack Obama, the White House should not be turn over to his second mate, Hillary Clinton. PTI