This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The announcement recently that former Chris Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien was named national field director for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign thrusts the Bridgegate scandal of 2013 back into the national consciousness.

Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, close allies of the New Jersey governor, were indicted on multiple conspiracy counts after an investigation of the closure of all but one lane near a toll booth on the George Washington Bridge which closed down traffic on one of the country's busiest thoroughfares for four days.

After emails surfaced implicating Stepien in what appeared to be a plot to cause embarrassment and harm to the city of Fort Lee, N.J., to punish its mayor for not endorsing Christie for re-election, Stepien was fired and Christie said he was appalled.

The governor has denied any knowledge of the plot and says he had nothing to do with the closure.

But there is another part of this story that seems to have gone relatively unnoticed and, to me, shows Christie, a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination and now a prominent Trump supporter, to be a charlatan and not a very good governor.

The bridge was virtually shut down for four days, blocking commutes from northern New Jersey into New York City, halting commuters' ability to go to work, making it nearly impossible for first responders to get to medical or other kinds of emergencies and causing horrible inconveniences for millions of people.

Nobody bothered to look at the lane blocking and its effects for days, until the traffic cones were ordered removed by a member of the Port Authority.

Whether Christie knew about the plot to embarrass the mayor or not, he had to have become aware of the dire situation in a major population center of the state he supposedly runs.

The fact that he did nothing during that time and seemed clueless to what was going on raises serious competency questions about a governor who at one time seemed like a frontrunning choice among the Republican establishment to be its standard bearer for 2016.

It's great to be politically ambitious. It's great to be formidable on the national stage. It's great to want to run for president. But when you are the governor of a state, you need to be the governor of that state, especially in times of emergency.

Earlier this year, Christie showed his indifference to his job again when he took off to campaign in New Hampshire while the coastal towns of New Jersey were suffering from storms and flooding that in some areas were worse than Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Here's what real governors do.

In the spring of 1983, Utah Gov. Scott Matheson was in a Salt Lake City hospital bed recovering from a heart attack when news spread that a massive mudslide on Billies Mountain in Spanish Fork Canyon blocked the Spanish Fork River, causing a large dam that created a lake where the town of Thistle sat. About 50 homes were evacuated and the rising lake covered up and destroyed the entire town.

As soon as Matheson heard about the disaster, he was out of bed and dressed, against doctors' orders, and soon on the state plane headed for the disaster site to personally assess the damage and begin communications with the federal government for disaster relief.

A few years later, when floods and mudslides were hitting communities all over Utah after several years of unusually high precipitation, the Great Salt Lake had risen to levels that threatened surrounding businesses and residential areas.

Matheson's successor, Republican Gov. Norm Bangerter, was, like his predecessor, all over the state assessing the damage and calling for federal relief. He eventually pushed through legislation that made available millions of dollars to build and maintain large pumps at the lake to be used to mitigate dangerous rising levels.

The weather changed, the lake's levels stabilized and eventually receded and the pumps have never been used. That led to some criticism of Bangerter and jokes about the pumps. But he acted at a time when drastic measures appeared necessary and he took a hands-on approach, unlike the New Jersey governor, who still acts like he just knew nothing about nothing. —