If you had Chris Christie as the 45th President of the United States, you lose!

There is no way on god's greenish planet that the formerly rotund and now simply "tund" governor will be nominated, much less elected President.

The reason? Two words: Public relations.

No matter how hard the New Jersey guv tries, he can’t help enveloping himself in one public relations nightmare after another.

  • First it was Bridgegate, where he feigned – and still feigns – ignorance of what his long-term staff loyalists purportedly did behind his ample back.
  • Next it was his self-praise as a savvy steward of the New Jersey economy, which now ranks 42nd among top states for going business, 42nd in cost of doing business and in the top 10 of highest state corporate income tax rates.
  • And now it’s Ebola.

Especially Ebola.

From the moment he sat down at a press conference last week with Gov. Andrew Cuomo to announce a New York/New Jersey plan to deal with Ebola, Christie has careening down a slippery public relations slope. And the way he continues to be descending – look out below!

Here are the rapid-fire public relations mistakes the Garden State’s governor has made in “handling” the Ebola scare.

  • Mistake #1: Failure to Fold.

Kenny Rogers used to warble that you “gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,” and Cuomo was listening. But Christie wasn’t.

When the White House immediately got its back up and warned of “unintended consequences” from the Cuomo/Christie unilateral decision to quarantine all medical workers returning from West Africa for 21 days – the wily Andrew wasted no time in changing his mind.

On second thought, said the cagey Cuomo, medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa but did not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.

And Christie?

No way, Jose. In the midst of campaigning, the big man wasn’t about to be seen caving to Republican Enemy Number #1 Obama. So he and his New York buddy parted ways. Big mistake, because that let to ……..

  • Mistake #2: Picking on a Nurse.

With his feet now dug in on New Jersey’s renegade Ebola policy, Christie was left to go toe-to-toe with nurse Kaci Hickox, recently back from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, and now residing, against her wishes, in an isolation tent at University Hospital in New Jersey.

And nurse Hickox was no shrinking violet; a “seething violet,” maybe, but not a shrinking one. She immediately went public on cable TV, labeling her treatment, “inhumane” and disputing the New Jersey governor’s press conference accusation that she was “obviously ill.”

As Ms. Hickox told CNN, “If he knew anything about Ebola he would know that asymptomatic people are not infectious.” Ouch. To stiffen her objection, Ms. Hickox hired a lawyer and threatened to sue New Jersey.

And a day later, adding insult to injury, Gov. Christie belatedly caved, allowing Hickox to leave New Jersey to return to her home in Maine, where she is presently battling that state’s governor to let her out of home quarantine.

For Christie, the whole episode was disastrous. Not only did he look like a bully, but he was roundly beaten in the process – by a nurse for god sakes!

  • Mistake #3: Clueless in Ebola Land.

Finally, having now been abandoned by both friend Andrew and Hickox, Christie was left alone to defend and implement his own New Jersey mandatory quarantine Ebola plan.

Only one problem: There evidently wasn’t any.

Four days after proclaiming his 21-day quarantine plan, neither Christie nor New Jersey health officials were willing to offer any details. The reason, they said, was that the Ebola mandate would be enforced through “internal documents that aren’t public.”

Whaaa?

And there we sit. The agencies in New Jersey assigned to implement Ebola policy, like the Port Authority, are uncertain about the protocols. And the state has yet to issue specific quarantine orders.

Christie, meanwhile, continues to campaign for fellow Republicans around the nation and is dead set on making a run for the party’s Presidential nomination.

Full disclosure: I voted twice for Christie for governor. Never again.

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Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He may be reached directly at [email protected]. He is the author of the Prentice- Hall text The Practice of Public Relations, now in its eleventh edition, and co-author of Rethinking Reputation and Idea Wise.