

Let's be frank: If Michael Drewniak were an affable and agreeable chap, rather than someone with the personality of an ulcerated nightclub bouncer, the vicious media and vile denizens of the chat room underworld would wish him buona fortuna and that would be that.



But for six years, he was the sneering lead voice of a bumptious cabal that was so arrogant in its abuse of power that it rarely even made the attempt to construct plausible lies, spending much of its time cultivating a straight-talk image that the vast majority of New Jerseyans now finds laughable.

So, surprise, it's spitball season on Mr. Drewniak, and that's unfortunate, because he should be commended for finding a career more consoling to people fated to look into a mirror each morning.

Is he qualified to be the new "policy and strategic planning director" for NJ Transit? Does it really matter? Any company that parks $120 million worth of trains in a swamp during a hurricane probably could use some strategic planning, if not something that resembles executive function.

Maybe Drewniak knows as much about rail as Wally Edge knew about bridges, but Chris Christie allies don't often need cred as much as they do an empty desk as they await the next lobbying gig or subpoena, which ever comes first.

He knows that a cushy job for which he has no conveyable skill is "a sensitive issue to the commuting public," but his daily train commute will expose him to a different breed of hoi polloi than he encountered aboard those private jets owned by Arab kings and NFL welfare queens.

But without question, it was time for a change, because Drewniak's divorce from the governor denotes the level of confidence he has in the next chapter of his boss's political life. Best of all, he is perfectly situated to rewrite the previous chapters at the precise moment of his departure, because he begins his new job on April Fools Day.

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