If everything the governor said stacks up, he’ll wind up diminished but the story will fade. If it doesn’t—if there are new revelations or questions that cast him in a dark light—he’ll be finished as a national figure.

His uphill fight for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 just got uphiller. Those Republicans who didn’t quite like him for other reasons have something new to hang their antipathy on.

How lucky is Hillary Clinton? Mr. Christie was leading her in the polls. If he got through the nomination he’d be a real threat.

I end with a thought about staffers and operatives in politics. They’re increasingly important. More and more these political players are weighing in on serious policy questions that affect how America is run. As Bob Gates makes clear in his memoir, political players in the Obama White House were to an unprecedented degree involved in foreign policy. That will be even more true in the future, whoever runs it.