Chris Christie is the loud, over the top, Springsteen loving, Tony Soprano-esque governor of New Jersey. Sometimes he seems like such a cliche, that he is more like Saturday Night Live character than a real person. Two things that come to mind when it comes to Chris Christie. First is that politics, like many things, is about timing, and Christie may have missed window of chance to run for president in 2012. The second thing is Christie may be a victim of what Rudy Giuliani faced in 2012, of being the tough Northeastern personality that is more popular in abstract than they are in real life. Christie is also a bit like Bobby Jindal, in that he is trying to run even though his star has faded a bit, and his true chances of winning seem like a stretch.
Did Chris Christie miss his best chance to become president by not running in 2012? There were a lot of people who were less than excited about Mitt Romney, and they thought Christie was the perfect solution to an underwhelmed base. He did not run in 2012, and now he is not only facing a tougher field of candidates. The pundits think he missed his chance by not running, but I think he may have had a better chance, I am not sure it would have been a sure thing. He had just as much potential to challenge Romney as any of the other flash in the pan 2012 candidates did. On the other hand, he may have just been another flavor of the day in a cycle where almost all the candidates had a lead or were high up in the polls at some point. How Christie would have done in 2012 does not address the bigger question of whether or not Christie would be a able to translate into a national campaign.
In 2012 Rudy Giuliani tried to parlay his role as New York mayor during and after the 9-11 into a run for president. He started with a lot of promise, but then made some early tactical errors and never really got off the ground. One possible explanation is that people like Rudy on TV being the tough mayor of America more than actually voting for him, especially when other than 9-11 he didn't very much to say. The best line in the whole campaign was Joe Biden described Giuliani talking as being little more than "Noun, verb, 9-11". Although not completely the same, I see a lot of similarities between Christie and Giuliani. They both based their reputations on being tough guy prosecutors. Republicans loved seeing Rudy talking tough on Fox News, and in the case of Christie you saw a seemingly endless stream of videos of the New Jersey governor berating and degrading reporters who dared ask questions he did not like. There is something that GOP base loves about these guys, but it love that is more in a certain context. Giuliani is great on Fox News and Christie is great in New Jersey, but does the mostly Southern base want to make one of these guys president.
Since the heart of the GOP has shifted from New England to the South, Northeastern guys have not fared well in presidential politics. George H. W. Bush, a classic New England Republican, beat another New England politician in 1988 and was bounced out by a Southerner in 1992, and Mitt Romney managed to win the nomination in spite of his performance in the South not because of it. You also have all of those Midwestern governors who looked good on paper, but flamed out. I am not saying a Northerner can never when the GOP nomination, it just seems to be an additional challenge to convince Southerners to vote for a Yankee - which leads us back to Chris Christie's chances to win. Even with a fairly respectable resumé, he can't break out of the middle of the pack. He is not facing the "your campaign is dead" rumors, but he is not getting the "your campaign is moving up" stories either. So what do you do with a campaign that is stuck, and can't get much traction? Christie has largely been focusing on his best chance of in New Hampshire. He has had a small bump in the polling but still stuck in the middle of the pack. He has to do very well in New Hampshire if is going to have even a remote chance of putting together a run, which will includes a lot of southern states after New Hampshire.
When talking about the current candidates, the conversation always leads back how has Donald Trump affected them. Trump is also playing up the tough urban Northeastern guy angle, and his antics, especially on immigration, are stealing some of Christie's tough guy riffs. If that is not bad enough, for the moment, Trump seems to be defying the gravity that brings down other politicians. I know it is a bit of a contradiction to say that part of the reason Christie is losing is that he is from the Northeast, when he is losing to New Yorker Donald Trump. I would say when actual voting starts Trump will not win. In the highly unlikely prospect that Trump were to win the nomination, it will blow such a giant hole in the beltway common wisdom, the fact that he is a New Yorker is the least shocking aspect of it.
Ultimately when I think of Chris Christie becoming the next president of the United States I would think of it terms of the NCAA basketball tournament. You have the Jindal, Graham, and Santorum that are more like 15 or 16 seeds that even if they pull off an upset they will never win the whole thing. Someone like Huckabee or Paul is like a 12 seed who can make some noise in the tournament but will also come up short. Christie and Cruz are like a 7 seed hoping to be the next North Carolina State or Villanova and catch a few breaks to win the whole thing. If you stretch that analogy to the upper tier of candidates it may seem initially crazy, but 2016 has some weak beatable candidates at the top.
The future for Chris Christie seems unclear right now, at least in terms of being in politics. He is probably not going to be president, and is not particularly popular in New Jersey right now. The combination of the Bridgegate scandal and his focus on running for president has hurt his brand in New Jersey. He does seem to be a good fit for the Senate. Of course he is a natural for right wing media. Fox News would be all over him, if they could get him to be a regular contributor. His combative style and over the top persona is perfect fit for the channel. There will be ways he can make money from this, it just depends on what route he takes.
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