As Obama and Christie toured the flood-ravaged towns of Paterson and Wayne, they fell into an easy repartee. Born a year apart, both were clever, able to charm at will, and irritated by pointless posturing. Publicly praising each other, they privately kibitzed about their kids. (Christie’s daughters, Sarah and Bridget, were close in age to Sasha and Malia.) After being ferried from spot to spot on Marine One for four hours, they returned to Newark, and Christie walked Obama to Air Force One.
“You’re not coming on there with me, too, are you?” the president inquired teasingly.
“Only if you ask,” Christie said.
“No, you can finish here,” Obama teased again, then flew back to Washington. When his aides wanted to know what he made of Christie, Obama grinned and said, “He’s a big man.”
The blanket coverage of the president and the governor in tandem only pumped more air into the rapidly inflating Christie boomlet. And so did Christie’s latest viral sensation: a video of him as the storm bore down, scolding seaside residents who were ignoring orders to evacuate. “Get the hell off the beach in Asbury Park!” he commanded. “It’s four thirty—you’ve maximized your tan. Get. Off. The. Beach.”
With reporters on the lookout for any small shard of Christie-related news, a rather large one plopped into their laps: an announcement by the Reagan Library that the governor would be delivering a major speech there on September 27. The appearance, in fact, had been on Christie’s schedule since April, when he received a handwritten invitation from Nancy Reagan. But that was beside the point. Rove had advised Christie to sprinkle some gas on the campfire. With Perry stumbling through the three September debates and anti-Romney Republicans fanning the embers, Big Boy’s library address was tantamount to a hogshead of petrol.
On September 24, the New York Post declared that Christie was “thinking about becoming the new face in the race” and quoted a Republican source asserting, “He’ll decide this week.” Former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, who decades earlier had mentored a teenage Christie and was now one of his informal advisers, told National Review, “It’s real. He’s giving it a lot of thought. I think the odds are a lot better now than they were a couple weeks ago.”
The billionaires’ club was getting the same impression from its closed-door talks with Christie. A few days before the Reagan Library event, Christie sat down with Langone, Druckenmiller, and Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor who was now one of Murdoch’s top lieutenants. The clock was ticking, Christie said. Given the hubbub surrounding the speech, he would need to decide soon after. The kinds of questions he was asking, his tone and body language, left his suitors feeling optimistic. Back at News Corp, Klein told Murdoch, I think he’s gonna play.
With word leaking out that Christie’s speech would be not about New Jersey but about America’s role in the world, speculation mounted that he might announce his candidacy then and there. His hosts at the library hoped that it was true. Even in her nineties, Mrs. Reagan remained a canny observer of the political scene and voracious consumer of political gossip. Christie’s strength and take-charge attitude had impressed her from afar (and she was not easily impressed). The library’s executive director, John Heubusch, a former Republican operative and Capitol Hill staffer, orchestrated the proceedings to give Christie a gentle nudge toward making news.
On the appointed day, the Christies arrived a bit early for a tour of the museum, beaming and holding hands. Lacking time for the full circuit, Heubusch made sure to plant them in the Legacy Theater to view the three-and-a-half-minute film on Reagan—a slick and emotional distillation of his life. The fortieth president was the first Christie had voted for, as a freshman in college; his reverence for Dutch was deep. As Christie exited the theater, Heubusch was pleased to see tears in his eyes. He ushered the governor to sit with Mrs. Reagan, whose well-practiced flattery bowled her guest over.
Before the speech, Heubusch, who would moderate the Q&A afterwards, asked Christie if he should kick things off by posing the obvious query.
Nah, Christie answered after thinking for a second. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen naturally. Just let it come from the audience.
Christie’s speech, titled “Real American Exceptionalism,” was bracing and solid, including a brisk critique of Obama as “a bystander in the Oval Office.” But the Q&A session was something else. The second question was the inevitable one; Christie brushed it off, encouraging the audience to visit Politico’s website, where a video compendium of his expressions of lack of presidential interest had been compiled. The last questioner, however, raised the topic again—from the balcony, with great feeling.
“We can’t wait another four years to 2016,” said a middle-aged woman, her daughter beside her. “I really implore you, as a citizen of this country, to please, sir, to reconsider. Go home and really think about it. Please. Do it for my daughter, do it for our grandchildren, do it for our sons.”
The audience sprang to its feet and roared applause. At the podium, Christie dropped his head and faintly buckled in the face of that rarest thing in politics: a genuine, spontaneous moment.
“I hear exactly what you’re saying, and I feel the passion with which you say it, and it touches me,” Christie said. “It’s extraordinarily flattering. But by the same token, that heartfelt message you gave me is also not a reason for me to do it. That reason has to reside inside me.”
• • •
CHRISTIE’S DANCE OF the seven hundred veils was starting to wear on Boston. Nervous all along watching the Big Boy shuffle, the Romneyites had taken comfort in the judgment of Schriefer, who talked regularly with Christie and his people and heard nothing but mollifying mewling. Now, though, between the press reports he was reading and subtle telephonic wavering from Trenton, Russ slipped into doubt. After months of maintaining regular contact, Beeson’s friend DuHaime suddenly had gone dark.
Christie’s behavior had long rankled Stevens the most, and now it was working his last nerve. A few days after the governor’s Simi Valley samba, Stuart phoned Palatucci in a huff.
What’s the governor of New Jersey doing at the Reagan Library? Stevens demanded to know.
He was asked by Mrs. Reagan, Palatucci replied. And when she asks, you have to go.
“The fuck you have to go!” cried Stevens. This is the problem with your whole operation. You’re sitting in Jim McGreevey’s seat, Christie Whitman’s seat, Jim Florio’s seat, Jon Corzine’s seat. And where are they now? “He’s the governor of New Jersey,” Stevens said. “There will be another governor of New Jersey.”
Stevens had been certain from the start that Christie would not run. That the flirtation was a charade, an exercise in self-pleasuring. If Christie gets in the race, Stevens told Palatucci, he’ll be out by the Super Bowl. And if he isn’t going to run, he’s doing needless damage to his brand.
“You’re killing Chris Christie,” Stevens said. You’re turning him into Mario Cuomo—Hamlet on the other side of the Hudson.
When Palatucci told the governor of Stevens’s tirade, Christie scoffed. He barely knew Stuart and didn’t much like him; Schriefer was his guy. And while Russ was also arguing, if more tactfully, that it was inadvisable for Christie to run, he dismissed those views, too. No shit they think it’s a bad idea if I get in! Christie thought. They work for Romney. It’s a bad idea for them if I get in!
Before returning from California, Christie told Palatucci he planned to lie low for the weekend ahead, October 1–2, and think through his decision. Tell people they shouldn’t call me or bother me or ask for updates—just leave me alone, Christie said.
In measuring the pros and cons, Christie faced a divided household on Corey Lane. None of his four children were in favor of him running; only Andrew expressed even the slightest openness to it. But in the weeks since the Langone meeting, Mary Pat’s apprehensions had abated. Early one recent morning, Chris had awoken from a sound sleep to find her wide awake, staring at him. “What�
�s up? What’s wrong?” he asked. And out of her mouth popped something she had never said before: if he was in, she was, too. “Don’t worry about me and the kids,” she said. “It’ll be hard, but we’ll be okay.”
There were other powerful factors on the positive side of the ledger. With Langone and his billionaire brethren behind him, Christie believed that, one way or the other, he could clear the money bar. With Murdoch and Ailes squarely in his corner, he had already won the Fox Primary without even entering the race. Rove had told him that clear paths to the nomination were a thing of the past, and Christie agreed. But after gleaning so much information from his weeks of explorations, he could see a route that was distinctly marked and mapped. His head told him he could win.
What was holding Christie back wasn’t intellectual, however. It was instinctual. There was his failed General Assembly bid in 1995, when he tried to jump to a state legislative seat after just a few months as a local official; he had stuck his chin out too far, too soon, and wound up on the canvas. Not wanting to repeat the error, he resisted pleas to run for governor in 2005, and his patience was rewarded four years later. To run for president, you have to know deep down it’s the right time, he thought. Because if you don’t, when things go sideways—and they always do—you’re going to be sitting there kicking yourself and saying, “I shoulda trusted my gut.”
Christie had hoped to have reached a decision by Sunday night. But when Monday dawned, his gut and his head were still at war—as every word he’d heard from office holders, party leaders, strategists, and billionaires raced through his mind. All day at work, he was in a muddle, not focused on his job. Being driven home, he finally reached his breaking point. You know what? Screw it? I’m not doing this, he thought. The burden lifted, he reclined his seat—and promptly fell asleep. Arriving at his house, he walked in and announced to his family, “Listen, guys, Dad’s made a decision: I’m not running.” Mary Pat smiled, and all four kids burst into applause.
The next day, Christie called a midday news conference at his office in Trenton and pulled the plug. “Over the last few weeks I’ve thought long and hard about this decision,” he said, acknowledging publicly for the first time that he had seriously considered it at all. “In the end, what I’ve always felt was the right decision remains the right decision today. Now is not my time . . . So New Jersey, whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with me.”
Christie then phoned Romney and suggested they get together soon. Four days later, Ann and Mitt arrived for lunch on Corey Lane. After two hours of idle chat and goofing around with two of the Christie kids on the patio, Romney asked what he needed to do to finally bring the governor on board.
“Nothing,” Christie said. “I’m in.”
Gobsmacked, Mitt turned to Ann and said, “Wow—Christmas in October.”
Smiling brightly, Ann said gratefully to Christie, “Governor, you don’t know how important and big this is.”
Actually, Christie said, “I do.”
For Christie, the ease of the endorsement reflected mainly the grimness of the other options. Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, Paul, Perry, Santorum: if those were the seven brides, Christie would abstain from being a brother.
Romney was at least a serious person, with an outside chance of winning—though Christie doubted his capacity to tackle Obama. Behind Mitt’s back, Chris mocked his Fred MacMurray affect and antiquated vocabulary. On the night after the Romneys came for lunch, Saturday Night Live did a cold-open sketch about Mitt and Chris, in which Jason Sudeikis portrayed Romney as an uptight priss (“Heck it all to fudge!”) and Bobby Moynihan played Christie as a coarsely charming favorite of the press (“After this poor bastard loses, I’ll get a nice head start, I’ll run in four years, it’ll be great—fat president, come on, it writes itself!”). Christie promptly memorized the skit and performed his part at private functions all over the country.
Three days later, on October 11, Christie flew up to Hanover, New Hampshire, to bestow his blessing publicly on Mitt. Romney was eager to unveil the endorsement before the next Republican debate, that night at Dartmouth—in particular because he hoped that it would rattle Perry. In a conference room at a small hotel crammed with national reporters, Christie delivered such a big, bold performance that it made Boston’s long wait since Drumthwacket well worth the angst. “America cannot survive another four years of Barack Obama,” Christie proclaimed. “Mitt Romney’s the man we need to lead America, and we need him now.”
After the endorsement, Christie delivered in another way. On a pair of conference calls arranged by Zwick—one with the campaign’s national finance committee, another with donors who had written checks for less than the full legal limit—Christie threw his financial support to Romney. Mary Pat and I have just written personal maxed-out checks, Christie announced to the contributors on the second call. You should do the same.
The move was pure theater, pure symbolism, but the gesture was a rarity among elected officials, and it packed a terrific wallop. In the days ahead, as Christie called around to the members of the billionaires’ club who had courted him so ardently, he urged them, too, to cast their lot with Mitt. The disappointment of the billionaires with Christie’s decision was acute. But one by one, they began their inexorable migration. Druckenmiller, Griffin, Loeb, Singer, Jones, Tepper: within weeks they would all be bundling for Romney, with many also writing massive checks to Restore Our Future. Leading the way was Ken Langone, who kept his word and jumped in with Mitt the moment Chris was out.
“Looks like we know who the horse is gonna be,” Langone told a friend. “Now all we gotta do is get the horse to finish the race.”
10
THE DATING GAME
ROMNEY HAD EVERY REASON to feel emboldened by the Christie endorsement. In a normal race, in a normal year, it would have been a landmark moment in his march to the nomination. With twelve weeks to go before the caucuses in Iowa, he had been spared a potentially destabilizing October surprise, and the donors who worshipped the New Jersey governor had seen the writing on the wall. It was Bill Clinton who once pithily captured the contrast between the two parties when it came to selecting a presidential standard-bearer: “Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line.” Now, finally, the GOP establishment seemed prepared to pile in behind Romney.
But Republican voters in the 2012 cycle were behaving like Democrats of yore. Even after their party’s most eligible bachelors had declined to enter the dating pool, they continued to resist a marriage of convenience to Mitt—they were still searching for true romance. Over the course of the next two months, they would engage in torrid flings with a pair of new paramours, each an unlikely leading man. And such fickleness would encourage the spurned suitors to stick around, hoping for another roll in the hay.
The first heartthrob on deck was Cain, the former pizza-peddling CEO who stood out from the pack for his self-promotional exuberance and the color of his skin. On the stump, Cain blessed his audiences with what he called “The Hermanator Experience,” a phrase he legally trademarked, and took delight in winking references to himself as the “dark horse” candidate.
Brassiness had brought Cain his first national notice back in 1994, when, as a member of the audience at a televised presidential town hall, he had challenged Bill Clinton over the contention that restaurateurs with part-time employees would bear little new cost under Clintoncare. (“With all due respect, your calculation on what the impact would do, quite honestly, is incorrect,” Citizen Cain brusquely informed 42.) From there it was on to a failed U.S. Senate run in Georgia, a successful stint as an Atlanta talk radio host, and a sprint into the arms of the Tea Party.
Cain approached public policy in much the same way he did pepperoni pies: with a greater concern for marketing than nutrition. His campaign’s signature economic proposal was developed by a Cleveland-based Wells Fargo wealth management adviser with no training in economics, who wanted to scrap the existing federal tax code and re
place it with three 8.7 percent taxes, on sales, personal income, and business transactions. “Goddammit!” Cain bellowed. “Nobody’s gonna remember 8.7, 8.7, 8.7. We’re rounding it up—it’s 9-9-9!”
Bolstered by the catchy simplicity of 9-9-9 and a series of flamboyant debate performances, Cain rose to the top of the polls nationally and in Iowa by the middle of October. On Fox News, Sarah Palin offered complimentary words about the new star, while also pegging him as “the flavor of the week” (and repeatedly referring to him as “Herb”). But Cain rejected the notion that he was a passing fancy. “I happen to believe that there’s ice milk and there’s Häagen-Dazs,” he told Jay Leno. “I’m Häagen-Dazs Black Walnut. It lasts longer than a week.”
Cain’s candidacy began to melt under the glare of scrutiny almost as soon as those words left his lips. “I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions,” he told one TV interviewer. “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m gonna say, ‘You know, I don’t know.’” More troubling to conservatives was Cain’s position on abortion, which he conveyed to CNN’s Piers Morgan as being essentially the same as (if less coherently formulated than) Mario Cuomo’s: personal opposition to the procedure but also to the government doing anything to prohibit it.
What reduced Cain to a puddle on the floor were personal accusations dating back to his tenure in the nineties as head of the National Restaurant Association. Alumni of the group remembered Cain as a flagrant tomcat who had been accused of sexual harassment. When he began climbing in the polls, they assumed the tales (there were many) would get out, and sure enough, they did. On October 31, Politico reported that two women had received financial settlements after lodging complaints that he had behaved inappropriately toward them. A few days later, a story about a third woman surfaced, and then a fourth, and then a fifth—the last alleging that she’d had a thirteen-year affair with Cain.
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