We hope you’ll excuse the multitude of Chris Christie articles of late, but the man continues to fascinate me every time he shows up in the news. This time he was making the rounds of Sunday morning chat festivals and, during a stop at Fox News, had the refreshing question of whether or not he would be running for president put to him for only the 3,287th time. The resulting answer, referencing a previous Zogby poll showing some excellent prospects for him, was informative.
“The president can rest easy because the only guy who beats him in that poll isn’t running,” Christie said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I have a commitment to my state,” he said, adding that he’d only been governor for a year and New Jersey’s problems still need fixing.
“You have to believe in your heart that you’re personally ready to be president and I’m not there,” Christie said. “I am not arrogant enough to believe that after one year as governor … that I am ready to be president of the United States.”
“So I’m not going to run,” the governor said.
It’s a fascinating answer, if only for the refreshing breath of humility and honesty coming out of the mouth of a politician. But was there perhaps more to his one off comment than meets the eye?
Jim Hoft seems to feel it was a thinly veiled dig at Barack Obama and his rather scanty resume at the time of his election. At the other end of the scale, Doug Mataconis thought he might be taking a shot at Sarah Palin, who only has a few months more time in the governor’s mansion than Christie to her credit.
I’m not sure it was either, frankly, and Christie doesn’t seem inclined to say. Once you become jaded enough to actually write about politics full time it’s relatively easy to ascribe sinister motives to anything politicians say or do. But I tend to think that Christie was just being Christie, as usual, and shooting from the hip about what’s on his mind. It’s not really a shocking opinion to feel that you might need a bit more seasoning than a single year in office before seeking the biggest brass ring in the land.
Christie also needs to deliver a lot of serious results in the very troubled state of New Jersey before he can walk away feeling like a good day’s work has been done. But if he manages to right the ship in the toxic political and economic climate of the Garden State, watch out. Should he decide he would like to be president in 2016, barring any serious disqualifying scandals in the interim, he could be a serious force to be dealt with.
This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
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