By grinning and bearing slurs from cable pundits today, Christie can start training himself to endure the avalanche of slurs, insults and slander that will come his way if he is the Republican presidential nominee. And he can start showing voters, not telling them, that he isn’t the ill-tempered, vengeful bully his detractors accuse him of being.

In the near term, the more worrying problem for Christie is the extent to which the rest of the media are already relying on the partisan accusations and innuendo that influence twitter and blogs and a fair number of cable pundits. A case in point is a front page Washington Post story this week that was driven, as far as I could discern, by sources who have a professional responsibility to make Christie’s life miserable: Democrats who would rather he not be the 2016 nominee nor have a successful second term as governor of New Jersey.

The mayor of Jersey City, and likely future Democratic gubernatorial candidate, complained that meetings he had scheduled with people in Christie’s administration were cancelled after he declined to endorse Christie. He’s been making the accusation for a while, but it was big news in the Post, where it was characterized as Christie “cutting off his access to top state officials.” That makes it seem a more permanent and widespread thing than it probably is. (And if cancelling a few meetings is how Christie exacts vengeance on his opponents, he’s more Mr. Rogers than Richard Nixon.)