Gov. Christie took a victory lap over his Bayway cleanup deal with Exxon last week, strutting like a peacock drunk with hubris, and offering further proof that the governor's greatest political strength is rooted in his supporters' unrelenting passion for refusing to figure stuff out.

He won that negotiation, he insists, because $225 million extracted from Exxon over its tar-dumping party is an adequate settlement over and above the polluter's cleanup and restoration obligations.

But here's what he doesn't tell you: Exxon has been obligated to clean the area since a consent order in 1991, but the real goal of the $8.9 billion lawsuit was the full-scale restoration of the 1,500 acres of wetlands contaminated by 4,000 tons of tar - which cannot be restored for decades, if at all.

That means the actual cleanup - which he crows was the deal-clincher - can come down to an agreement between Exxon and Christie based on cost and practicality. And given that the time it takes to restore such a hellscape is mostly a theory, Exxon may be permitted to simply cap the site and contain the contaminants and simply move on - rather than pay the $2.6 billion that the lawsuit sought for the disposal of the toxic material, as required by DEP standards.

Sure, they may do the perfunctory hot-spot cleanups, such as removing toxins from areas that might contaminate groundwater, and Exxon claims such remediation has been ongoing for years. Beyond that, however, it's the governor's call. And after 24 years of foot-dragging, his pals at Exxon have probably convinced him to rethink the standards of a thorough cleanup, as they've already received the Jersey Discount.

You wouldn't know that from our governor's presentation: He accepted three cents on the dollar to plug another budget hole and keep a big donor happy, but what played best on YouTube was his swanky command of an oil company to stay in its room and not come out until all its dirty laundry is picked up.

Apparently, this is the kind of stuff that gets slack-jawed nods on the campaign trail.

But sorting through 700 pages of material from the litigation, you get a vivid understanding of what Exxon calls a "cleanup" and how the oil giant places more value on its ability to influence regulators than on its ability to restore a sludge lagoon.

The internal Exxon documents from its Bayway Site Remediation team - obtained by NY/NJ Baykeeper through an OPRA request - reveals a "business strategy" that emphasizes the "management of Exxon environmental liabilities arising from historic contamination in the most cost-effective manner possible."

And since 1997, its strategy is spelled out in a single phrase: "The key to lowering costs is to change the rules of the game," it reads.

The best way to achieve this is to have an ally in the state house. In this case, it was a governor who surrendered to the will of campaign contributors, sold out his people, and had the gall to call it victory.

But this is only partly about the costs of cleanup and restoration, which is far higher than Exxon would be willing to expend in both effort and real dollars without a judge's decree.

This is also about our expectations of living in New Jersey, even in that dismal shadow of the Turnpike where the human toll cannot be measured. It is about the need for a government that is devoted to our interests, and its response to a century of degradation.

Six years into one man's dalliance with transient and distracted stewardship, that sounds like a laugh line.

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