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What New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday may have mattered less than how long he took to say it.

With his presidential ambitions and, potentially, his governorship put at risk by scandal, the Republican Christie fielded dozens of questions from reporters during a midday news conference that lasted nearly two hours.

“Giving a press conference like this is a first step that can reinstate his believability and standing,” says Marcus Messner, a professor of communication at Virginia Commonwealth University. “For him to go before reporters that long gives the image that he’s willing to answer any questions about this, and he’s in charge and he will clean up this mess.”

It’s crisis management 101. When confronted with a scandal, take your lumps quickly by getting out as much information as you can.

After denying for weeks that traffic snarl-ups caused by bridge lane closures were politically motivated, Christie announced he was firing Bridget Kelly, his deputy chief of staff, and removing Bill Stepien, his former campaign manager, from his political operation.

His main purpose, though, was to express contrition. He apologized repeatedly to the citizens of his state.

“It’s showing that he was embarrassed and shows remorse,” says Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, a University of North Texas political scientist who has studied press conferences. “It’s trying to counter what is seen as political corruption by trying to reinforce that he’s a person of integrity and wouldn’t do something like this.”

Responsible But Blameless

Christie stated repeatedly that he had no knowledge of the decision to choke off traffic from Fort Lee, N.J., onto the George Washington Bridge.

He said that his aides had lied to him about their machinations, which were revealed as political payback by emails and text messages that were published on Wednesday.

While saying he had been “blindsided” by the revelations, Christie also said that the buck stopped with him, as governor.

Christie seemed to be trying to walk a fine line between dodging blame and accepting responsibility. That’s just about what he had to do with this appearance, says Messner, the VCU professor.

“The goal was for him to show he’s in command, that he has nothing to hide and that he was stunned and he had no knowledge about any of this,” Messner says.

Taking All Comers

Other politicians have tried the same tack, showing themselves willing to answer any and all questions reporters might have about a scandal.

Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic candidate for vice president back in 1984, might have pioneered this technique. When questions arose about her husband’s financial dealings, she also held a marathon news conference that lasted nearly two hours.

Eshbaugh-Soha compares Christie’s performance to the ritual humiliation recent presidents have had to endure with day-after news conferences, following big losses by their parties in midterm elections.

“It’s like, ‘This was on me,’ and trying to figure out, in front of the media, what went wrong,” he says. “There’s a symbolism behind this. It’s consistent with what Christie has always said, that he’s going to be open and transparent, which is a very important expectation that people have.”

Indeed, Christie at times seemed almost to be offering a meta-analysis about his own public image, as someone who is “direct,” as he said, but “not a bully.” His dominant emotion, he said, was not anger but sadness.

How It Was Received

It was clear that the news conference is not going to be the end of Christie’s problems. Shortly before it began, Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, announced he was opening a criminal probe into the matter.

As Christie spoke, a legislative hearing was getting underway at which his Port Authority appointee David Wildstein, who was implicated by the emails, refused to testify for fear of incriminating himself.

Christie’s news conference lasted so long that reporters were able to ask Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich about plans the governor announced to visit his city later in the day, and then ask Christie for reaction to what Sokolich had said (which was, in so many words, please don’t come).

For the most part, Christie received good marks. Some Democrats questioned his veracity, including Barbara Buono, who ran against Christie last year. She said Thursday on MSNBC that people in the governor’s office don’t sneeze or go to the bathroom without his permission.

But most commentators felt Christie had acquitted himself well — assuming he didn’t say anything false or inaccurate that would trip him up later.

“Just as important as the words he’s saying is Christie’s tone in presser right now — notably calm, somber,” tweeted ABC News Producer Elizabeth Hartfield.

Others felt he overstayed his welcome, with jokes comparing his epic news conference to speeches by foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin.

“The longer Christie talked, the less he sounded angry and resolute and the more he sounded as if he were making excuses,” wrote Bloomberg Businessweek Correspondent Joshua Green.

Early conservative reaction, though, gave Christie high marks for accountability, both for being willing to fire people and for standing up to meet the press at such length.

“People saying Christie going on too long,” John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, tweeted. “And if he’d walked off, they would have said he ran away from tough questioning.”

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Mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug dealers were once viewed as powerful levers in the nation’s war against drugs, a way to target traffickers, and punish kingpins and masterminds.

But Congress, which approved the requirements in 1986 when crack-fueled crime gripped America’s big cities, is now grappling with a present-day, lower-crime reality: have the mandatory sentences put the wrong sort of offenders in prison, for too long, and at too high a cost for the nation to bear – both literally and figuratively?

Those questions are expected to be addressed in a comprehensive Senate bill being hammered out in negotiations driven by a seemingly unlikely alliance.

How unlikely? Among those driving the conversation are Tea Party Republicans like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, and liberal Democrats including Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Under discussion are proposals that would cut minimum sentences by half, give judges more sentencing discretion, and retroactively apply new crack cocaine sentencing standards to prisoners convicted under previous requirements.

Also being considered are in-prison programs that could help non-violent inmates earn earlier release.

(President Obama dipped his toe into the debate recently when he commuted the sentences of eight federal inmates convicted of crack cocaine crimes. The convicts would have received far shorter prison terms under the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act standards designed to reduce the disparity between sentencing rules for crack and powder cocaine.)

“There’s a lot more momentum today than in the 20 years I’ve been doing this,” says Julie Stewart, president and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, or FAMM.

“Over-incarceration used to be a fringe issue, but it has become more of a mainstream concern,” says Stewart, who started FAMM after her brother received a prison sentence for growing pot plants.

Push Back From Prosecutors

But while advocates such as Stewart, libertarian thinkers at the CATO Institute, and a growing number of conservatives like columnist George Will, are pushing for change, some drug prosecutors have urged caution.

“The real power and efficacy of federal minimum mandatory sentences is our ability to hold them over certain peoples’ heads in solving kingpin drug cases, or major murders,” says Scott Burns, head of the National District Attorneys Association.

Burns was among the witnesses who testified about mandatory minimums last fall before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The sentencing rules have been “an important tool,” in driving down serious crime, Burns says, which over the past three decades has plummeted.

He sees Congress’s motivation as purely financial.

“They’re doing this because they are simply refusing to fund more federal prisons, period,” says Burns, a former deputy director of National Drug Control Policy during the George W. Bush administration.

There have also, however, been assertions that federal prosecutors have used harsh sentences as a cudgel to elicit guilty pleas.

A Human Rights Watch study released in December found that the Justice Department in federal drug cases regularly coerces guilty pleas by threatening long sentences.

The report came a few months after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would not pursue mandatory minimum sentences in cases involving low-level, non-violent drug defendants.

“We must ensure that our most severe mandatory minimum penalties are reserved for serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers,” he wrote in an August memo, which he followed with a set of guidelines for federal prosecutors.

A Panoply Of Proposals

A bill sponsored by Durbin and Lee would cut by half the 5-, 10-, and 20-year minimums now required for first and second drug-sale offenses.

Separate legislation offered by Paul and Leahy would give judges the ability to impose sentences short of the minimum guidelines. Additionally, senators Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, have proposed allowing inmates to shorten their sentences by participating in re-entry programs.

And Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, has introduced his own bill that, among its provisions, would allow low-risk prisoners to serve up to half of their remaining sentences in home confinement or a halfway house.

Also under discussion is the federal version of the state-based “Three Strikes” law, which, since 1994, has required “enhanced sentencing” for defendants with two or more previous felony convictions in state or federal courts. Life in prison has been mandatory if the defendant is convicted of a serious violent felony, and has at least one prior serious felony conviction, which can be a drug conviction.

Leahy, at a Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday, said he was encouraged by progress made to “reach a bipartisan and comprehensive compromise on sentencing reform that includes important, yet incremental, changes to mandatory minimum sentencing legislation.”

The Financial, And Constitutional, Angle

The financial element of the mandatory sentencing debate is an important consideration.

Cornyn has touted his reform proposal as an effort to “increase public safety and reduce prison costs.” In introducing his legislation, Whitehouse noted that 30 percent of the Justice Department’s budget is now dedicated to federal prisons; the cost, he said, has doubled since 2000.

“As a result,” he said, “funding for other important federal law enforcement priorities – from stopping cyber threats to providing services for victims of crime – has suffered.”

But legal scholars like Erik Luna, a Washington and Lee University law professor who has written and testified extensively about mandatory minimum sentencing, also assert that the sentencing rules shift power from judges to prosecutors – an infringement on separation of powers doctrine.

It’s an argument George Will recently invoked: “The policy of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses has empowered the government to effectively nullify the Constitutional right to a trial.”

Stewart, of FAMM, says she gives Rand Paul “a ton of credit for getting this conversation going. He cares deeply about it.”

“The question we have to ask is why is prison always the answer?” she says. “We have to unlearn the bad habit we’ve developed of incarceration first.”

Burns, the prosecutor, says he and members of the National District Attorneys Association are willing to talk about improving the sentencing system, but they want more specifics from Capitol Hill.

“We can always do better,” he says, “but if you start letting people out who got there for a reason, most of them multiple offenders who have been convicted of have pled guilty, that would be a problem.

“Why arrest and convict, knowing he’s going to be back on the street?”

But when a reluctant judge is forced by minimum sentencing rules to impose a 55-year sentence on a 24-year-old man after his third small-time marijuana sale conviction, Stewart says, pointing to the much-publicized case of Weldon Angelos, doing better isn’t just an option. It’s mandatory.

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A record-high percentage of Americans identified as political independents last year, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday.

The survey, based on more than 18,000 interviews conducted throughout the year, found that 42 percent identified as independent, the highest figure since the polling firm began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago.

In 2013, 31 percent identified as Democrats while 25 percent identified as Republican.

According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans identifying as independents grew as the year progressed — surging in the final three months of the year alongside the federal government shut down and the troubled debut of the Obamacare website.

Although Gallup notes that it’s common for the percentage of independents to increase in a non-election year, the uptick in independent identification reflects a trend in recent years toward more Americans eschewing party labels.

The shift toward increased independent status has been more damaging to the GOP than the Democratic Party. Since peaking at 34 percent in 2004, Republican identification has now fallen to 25 percent — the lowest level in 25 years.

Democratic identification has also declined in recent years but at a lesser rate, falling to 31 percent from a high of 36 percent in 2008 when President Barack Obama was elected.

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The Senate surprised quite a few people in Washington today when it voted to proceed on a bill to temporarily extend emergency unemployment benefits. Six Republicans joined Democrats in voting to get the measure over a key procedural hurdle.

But it was only the first step, and the president is applying pressure to keep it moving.

For Democrats, extending unemployment benefits is a top legislative priority — with the added political benefit of playing up their populist message and painting Republicans as uncaring. And this morning it seemed to be going right on script: Senate Democrats went to the floor and beat up on their Republican colleagues as if the bill was destined to hit a partisan road block.

“Failing to restore emergency assistance would not only [be a] crushing blow to the long-term unemployed, but it would be a blow to our economy,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who accused Republicans of “callously turning their backs on the long-term unemployed.”

But then, thanks to a bare minimum of Republican support, the bill actually got enough votes to move on to the next step. An hour later, President Obama spoke from the East Room of the White House with a group of unemployed Americans standing behind him.

With a different outcome in the Senate, the event could have turned into an attempt at shaming congressional Republicans. Instead, the president attempted to build on the bill’s momentum. “Congress should pass this bipartisan plan right away, and I will sign it right away, and more than one million Americans across the country will feel a little hope right away,” Obama said. “And hope is contagious.”

About 1.3 million Americans saw their unemployment benefits end abruptly last week, when the federal emergency unemployment insurance program — started during the recession — expired. And without congressional action, advocates say, tens of thousands of people will lose benefits each week.

Katherine Hackett, an unemployed nursing home administrator from Connecticut, is one of them. Her benefits stand to run out Feb. 22. She has two sons who are in the military and wrote a letter to the president telling him about her struggles.

“Unemployment benefits have been absolutely essential to cover my bare necessities,” she said as she introduced Obama at today’s event. “I am not just sitting home enjoying the good life. My cuts include heating my house to 58 degrees, wearing a hat and a coat to stay warm because oil is expensive. I have lost weight because food is expensive.”

President Obama said he was grateful for the Senate action and urged the House to do something too. “Letting unemployment insurance expire for millions of Americans is wrong,” he said. “Congress should make things right.”

There’s a disagreement about precisely how to do that. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has been saying for about a month that any extension of benefits would have to be paid for and include a job-creation initiative of some kind. In a statement today, he said that the president has offered no such plan.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed that sentiment on the Senate floor. “Yes, we should work on solutions to support those who are out of work through no fault of their own,” he said. “But there is literally no excuse to pass unemployment insurance legislation without also finding ways to create good, stable, high-paying jobs — and also trying to find the money to pay for it.”

The White House doesn’t see it that way. Press Secretary Jay Carney says Congress should pass a clean short-term extension, just like the bill that cleared a hurdle in the Senate today, “and thereby create the time here in Washington for further discussions about how to move beyond the three months.”

The bill likely faces another procedural vote in the Senate before it can move to final passage. Republicans may be less willing to move it along without securing spending cuts in exchange.

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When a reporter asked Reince Priebus Tuesday if Republicans would respond to a question about any issue by somehow directing the conversation back to the Affordable Care Act, the Republican National Committee chairman answered tongue-in-cheek.

“The answer is Obamacare,” he said. “No, I’m just kidding.”

Well, yes and no. The ACA is the definitely the gift that keeps giving as far as national Republicans are concerned. That’s why Priebus made his playful remark on a teleconference to announce new GOP radio ads targeting several Senate Democrats and House members who echoed President Obama’s infamous promise that, under the ACA, people could keep health care plans they liked.

“I don’t think when you’re talking about something that takes up a sixth of the U.S. economy and something that has been as dramatically misrepresented to the American people and something that’s affecting everybody in their mailbox and in their lives, it’s not possible for this not to be the number one issue going into the 2014 elections. It’s just not.

“We’re not talking about a car registration fee,” Priebus added. “We’re talking about people’s health care, losing their doctors and their insurance. It’s polling right now, in some of our polls, it’s tied with the question of the economy.”

The radio ads, which Priebus said will be aired in 40 markets, are meant to hit congressional Democrats in their ACA weak spot. And they contain quite a punch.

A woman’s voice in one ad urges listeners to make it their new year’s resolution to “keep Sen. Mary Landrieu honest in 2014.” The voice says: “President Obama and Sen. Landrieu said if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it under Obamacare. They lied to you big-time. Politifact called that the ‘Lie of the Year.'” Ouch.

The ads are meant to soften up vulnerable Democrats early on, in advance of the onslaught that will happen closer to November, Priebus said.

The other targeted Democrats include three senators who, like Landrieu, are viewed as the Senate’s most endangered species — those representing states Obama lost in 2012: Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

A few Senate Democrats who aren’t quite so endangered were also targeted: Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mark Warner of Virginia.

House Democrats skewered by the ads include two who are running for the Senate — Bruce Braley of Iowa and Gary Peters of Michigan — as well as Tim Bishop of New York and Nick Rahall of West Virginia.

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President Obama and fellow Democrats, just back from a long holiday break, are immediately embracing a legislative agenda that would increase the minimum wage and extend unemployment insurance benefits to an estimated 1.3 million long-term jobless in America.

And the push — outlined by the president in his weekly address to the nation, and taken up Monday by Democrats in the Senate — has received strong push back from Republicans who charge the pivot is nothing more than a politically motivated effort to distract the public from the still-troubled health care law rollout.

The politics of the move are self-evident: Obama and Democrats seem energized by the opportunity to tackle issues on which polls show a majority of Americans tend to agree with the president and his party.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, for example, found that 63 percent of Americans surveyed supported raising the nation’s required minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $10.10, as Democrats have proposed. Recent polls by Democratic-affiliated firms suggest there is also majority-plus support for extending unemployment benefits, though the national sentiment is less clear.

This week Obama and congressional Democrats, joined by union and other liberal advocacy groups, plan a series of events, including a White House meeting Tuesday between the president and a group of unemployed workers, a Wednesday rally of unemployed workers and activists in Washington and heavy lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Hill action began with an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, to corral all 55 Democrats and at least five Republicans to ensure a filibuster-proof majority in support of reinstating unemployment assistance for the long-term unemployed. A test vote was expected to come Monday evening, unless senators’ weather-related travel problems conspire to push it to Tuesday.

But even if the measure passes the Senate, GOP House Speaker John Boehner has said any extension of unemployment benefits has to be offset by spending cuts.

Bill Samuel, chief lobbyist for the AFL-CIO, said his organization is “very focused on the unemployment insurance issue.” Its state leaders have reached out to senators, Samuel says, “we hope to have thousands of phone calls made to undecided senators.”

Republican groups have responded in kind. The conservative Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America on Monday warned Republican senators that a “yes” vote on the measure to reinstate emergency unemployment benefits would be noted in their influential annual scorecards.

Extending benefits for three months, as the Senate bill proposes, “would cost taxpayers $6.555 billion,” Heritage Action asserted, adding that “even if lawmakers attempt to offset this new spending with real cuts elsewhere, they would still be throwing taxpayer money at an ineffective and wasteful program.”

As of late Monday afternoon, the Senate was still scheduled to hold an evening roll call vote on the benefits extension bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada.

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