Usually, it takes winning the GOP presidential nomination for a Republican media darling to experience such an onslaught of gleefully negative press coverage. John McCain was the straight-talking maverick right up until the moment he effectively clinched the nomination in 2008 — immediately triggering a thinly sourced New York Times report insinuating an affair with a lobbyist.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has gotten his disillusioning out of the way early, if he needed it. An occupational hazard of a certain kind of Republican is wanting to be loved by the wrong people. If the past week hasn’t cured Christie of that tendency, nothing will.

This is not to say that “Bridgegate” is, to use the Left’s favorite term for any Obama-administration scandal, “a faux scandal.” The abuse of power it involves is genuinely outrageous and, since Christie is a prominent potential presidential candidate, one that legitimately deserves national attention. But it isn’t Watergate or the Lewinsky affair. Christie is governor, not president, of New Jersey.