Chris Christie: the new not-Trump candidate is running
If your sweepstake ticket reads “inevitable entry of Chris Christie into a race he’s never going to win”, then please proceed to Window B and prepare to collect your winnings, because, yes, we’re almost at that time. Can you feel the excitement building?
The news that a Super-PAC has been set up to support Chris Christie’s bid for the Republican nomination should not come as a surprise. It’s one of those familiar landscapes of the political spring, like Lindsey Graham’s first blonde rinse of the season. Since 2012, it has always been a special moment in the US political cycle when speculation starts about the plans of the former Governor of New Jersey and still something of a player inside the Republican tent.
Phrases like “larger than life” and “heavyweight” are routinely thrown around when talking about Christie, when the writers really want to address the former governor’s weight problem. His obesity has led to health problems in recent years, yet Christie’s appeal has always been grounded in his body shape. You really can’t ignore it, or, if you do, you ignore why he’s always been a special kind of politician. In a field of forgettable candidates, Christie stands out. His New Jersey accent is pronounced and his ability to be genuinely funny rare. He can be caustic and mean but that’s to be celebrated when most politicians are so cookie-cooker they come with salted caramel noses.
He also understands the media. This is the guy who once appeared on late-night TV with Jimmy Fallon in a skit called “Evolution of Dad Dancing”, wearing a pair of high-belted chinos with his shirt tucked into his pants. Comfortable with his body shape, he threw himself into the dance and managed what all politicians hope to achieve but few succeed: he humiliated himself on the public stage in a way that enhanced his image. If his weight problem was self-evidently a weak point, he turned it to his advantage. “If I can laugh at it,” he seemed to say, “then there’s nothing you can do to hurt me.”
It’s why it’s always been a matter of “when” not “if” he would run. It has always been a matter of his choosing the “right moment” to leap onto the national stage. Back in 2012, he didn’t consider it the right moment. He dropped out before the race began and ended up endorsing Mitt Romney.
He did think the time was right four years later when he jumped at just the right moment to land in front of the Donald Trump steamroller. It would be easy to shrug and say he never had a chance against Trump and that stronger candidates also failed. But that’s to dismiss how Christie was a serious candidate back in 2012. By 2015, however, his star had dimmed somewhat. He had achieved national prominence but not in the way he’d hoped. By then, the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal had been news across all networks for years. It was alleged that Christie had been manipulating traffic across the George Washington Bridge to create deliberate travel misery for commuters to embarrass a rival in New Jersey politics, Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee. That was back in 2013 yet the story was still making headlines as recently as 2020 when the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of those found complicit in the scheme. Those convicted did not include Christie, whose political fortunes could not be saved by a simple Supreme Court decision.
He didn’t run in 2020, though his health had suffered due to Covid. And then there was his Trump problem.
Christie had been an early advocate of “The Donald”. Although he’d bid for the party’s nomination in 2016, he was an early casualty to the Trump juggernaut, but he also had the political wits to throw his weight behind Trump and was given the role of planning Trump’s transition. Christie was soon seen as a proxy for Trump, yet he was never a true Trumper. Trump was merely a flag of convenience and when the time was right, Christie would express views explicitly contradicting the president. He said Trump was wrong on the Covid response, in his relationship with Putin, his language around soldiers and protestors, and then over the result of the 2020 election. Wherever Trump put a foot, Christie was there to say he’d put it wrong.
And, in fairness to Christie, he was usually right. Christie became the most vocal exponent of the Republican orthodoxy and that’s probably why he’s running now.
Put yourself in his shoes. He knows that Trump is a one-trick pony, though, admittedly, that trick is world-class and still has a big audience that enjoys watching it. He sees how Ron DeSantis is a weak candidate being overpromoted by a media desperately looking for a Trump alternative. The other candidates are either pale Trumpians (Haley, Pompeo) or political misfits and nobodies, such as Marianne Williamson, whose only relevance to the race is forcing people to remind themselves how to spell her name.
Christie, on the other hand, is an extremely strong retail politician, but one whose star has dimmed. He’s late-era Burt Reynolds looking for a “Boogie Nights” to revitalise his career. And he certainly has the chops to do that. He knows how to perform in debates (though Trump’s participation in those debates is doubtful) and also has the inside track having worked on Trump’s campaign. Paradoxically, the very factor which diminished his political standing (his proximity to Trump) now becomes an advantage. Unlike DeSantis who has leaned into Trumpism, often taking it further than the former president would ever take it, Christie is the candidate who can legitimately say “I followed him to that point but I went no further”. He has been the Jiminy Cricket on Trump’s shoulder since 2016. He can legitimately point out that he stood firm when many in the GOP did not.
Does he stand a chance? The political wisdom would suggest he starts too far back and he’s not without some baggage of his own. Yet DeSantis started quite far ahead and look where he is now in the polls. Christie does have the ability to hurt his rivals and in a long contest, he might mix things up a little. He is right to say he’s not in it to be a “political assassin” because the scenarios are too nuanced. The Republican Party is in a state of flux and there’s considerable jostling going on for a prime position for that time after Trump.
One thing is certain: the Republican race will be better with Christie in it rather than sitting outside.
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