Chris Christie is a symptom...
His promotion to a leadership position is a symptom of human nature's insistence to defer to authoritarianism.
It's actually a form of intellectual laziness at play. That brute force could be effective in running a society with positive ends. The problem is that people who think this way are quick to dismiss any potential problems from putting those authoritarians in charge.
And don't disregard the tribalism aspect of this issue. When people are willing to promote authoritarian leaders they fully expect those leaders to punish those that they dislike on behalf of themselves. If the leader becomes generally problemactic, incompent or corrupt, these intellectual dullards and partisans will be first to defend and excuse the behavior.
Authoritarian leaders become more problematic and ill-equipped to govern and effectively lead, given the larger the organization.
There is unwillingness to properly assess the overall negative impact of authoritarian leadership while that leadership is in power. You can credit fear of retaliation and direct and indirect intimidation for that.
Authoritarian leaders are always looking for their next victim, all the while, transferring the mantle of victimhood upon themselves in order to compensate for their egregious misdeeds and poor leadership.
They depend on the illusion of effectiveness through authoritarian actions to mask what they're really up to. Usually things that are ultimately self-serving. No one should expect that the primary motivating drive of an authoritarian is to be an egalitarian.
All in all, the book has already been written on authoritarians like Chris Christie. The problem, however, is the fact that so few people want to read it.
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