The Christie phenomenon tells us much about how deeply unimpressed the Grand Old Party is with its present field of candidates, as well as the subterranean fear that if Mitt Romney is chosen, the Tea Party might put up a third party candidate against him, thereby giving the election to Obama in the same way that Ross Perot gave the 1992 election to Bill Clinton. Christie's fiscal conservatism and punchy personality would have ended any danger of that happening, and united the party in a way that Romney will find problematic with the Tea Party purists. After Christie's announcement, Romney wasted no time before wooing him as "a terrific person to have on the ticket". Although Christie isn't running, the five theories one hears about why he is not tell us much that is interesting and important about the 2012 and 2016 races.  

According to the first and most obvious theory, Christie thinks Obama is going to win and therefore wants to wait until the  election of 2016, when Christie will still be only 54 and has a viable chance of winning. Although that race will feature a much better slew of Republican candidates — probably including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jinda — Christie is thought not to want to run in 2012 only to become another Bob Dole or John McCain. This theory is plain wrong: at a private dinner party last month Christie explained to me and others at length why he thought Obama was eminently beatable next year, especially when the US currently has a 9.1 per cent unemployment rate, a tanking stock market, and Obama himself merely a 39 per cent approval rating. For all the president's undoubted electioneering eloquence, none has been re-elected with unemployment so high in America since the days of FDR. 

The next theory is that Christie has skeletons in his political closet, which he doesn't want exposed to the full glare of an American presidential campaign. These tend to range from favours done in his days as a political lobbyist, to the fact that the Genovese family mobster boss Tino Fiumara is his aunt's husband's late brother. Christie also awarded a multimillion dollar, no-bid contract to David Kelley, another former US attorney, who had previously cleared Christie's brother Todd of a 2005 fraud case involving traders at the Wall Street firm of Spear, Leeds & Kellogg. Yet as US Attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008, Christie was a crime-busting lawyer who won every one of the 130 high-profile corruption cases he prosecuted, and so he was bound to make some enemies in the process. Besides, helping out one's brother in America comes under the general heading of believing in family values. If these issues failed to prevent him winning the governorship of New Jersey long after they came to light, would they really be more dangerous to his national chances?