But now proceed to this point: Almost everybody who seeks the presidency has demons to slay on his or her way to the office. The long road to the highest office in the land is a contest not only against political rivals but against the flaws of a candidate’s own character and temperament.

We all have such flaws. In would-be presidents, they tend to be outsized and to carry outsized importance. What we are looking for in a president is not a person without such flaws but a person who has struggled with them and overcome them. …

At the end of his own career, Richard Nixon delivered an eloquent self-assessment of his own failure as president: “Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” Unlike Nixon, Christie can benefit from that wisdom at the beginning of a presidential career rather than at its tragic end.