The Christie/Obama Faux-mance

Over at the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis pouts over the Obama/Christie love-fest, otherwise known as post-natural disaster federal assistance.

When Christie says he doesn’t “give a damn about Election Day,” that is also concerning — assuming he believes there are clear differences between the two candidates. While nobody should discount the seriousness of the storm — or Christie’s responsibility to his constituents — electing the leader of the free world has serious consequences, too. Is Christie really saying that the plight of his state today outweighs the seriousness of electing a President of the United States of America for four years?

Drum counters:

I sort of give Christie the benefit of the doubt here. Partly this is because he does seem to be a genuinely emotional guy and may simply be reacting to the moment. But the other reason is that I find it hard to believe that Christie truly thinks he has a chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2016 regardless of what he does.

I agree that Christie doesn’t have 2016 in mind here (as Drum points out, do you even think the GOP would nominate a pro-life, Sharia apologist any time soon?), and people are wrong to blindly assume Christie has any ulterior motive other than New Jersey’s full recovery. For all his bluster, Christie has always struck me as remarkably genuine (not to mention unapologetically emotional). We can over-analyze this all we want, but if Christie is thinking about his political future at all — which, again, I really don’t think he is — it’s not 2016 he’s worried about. He is, after all, a conservative governor in a liberal state who’s up for reelection next year. “It was an emotionally overwhelming afternoon for me as a son of this state,” Christie tweeted yesterday, and I’m inclined to take him at face value.