Chris Christie may win GOP hearts in 2016

Llewellyn King

Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.

I love Chris Christie to bits. He comes in Republican raiment, but he is an authentic man-of-the people in voice, in demeanor and in body language.

One wonders if he showed up at Mitt Romney’s house whether he would be shown in, or asked to wait outside while the master was summoned.

He was, perhaps, the one person in the Tampa convention not pretending to have the common touch. Christie is common. He does not have to try and convince us that he is something he is not.

Contrast that with Ann Romney, charming though she was, still evoking Meissen porcelain, lobster and truffles.

One had the distinct feeling that Christie’s speech was written and vetted by those who will manage his presidential campaign in 2016, if Romney falters.

Ann Romney’s sounded as though it had been sent over by Dr. Phil, the feel-good TV guru.

Romney preached love. Christie, the tough guy, said respect trumped love.

Christie told us about his Sicilian mother — not his Italian mother, but his Sicilian mother — invoking a hint of menace. Romney told us what a great husband Mitt is and how he does good by stealth, putting his good deeds out of public reach like his tax returns.

Christie’s ostensible job as the keynote speaker was to promote Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee. He shirked the task, instead talking about himself 95-percent of the time. If he was intended to reveal the real Romney to us, he elected instead to give lashings of the real Christie.

Ann Romney was implicitly tasked with selling her husband to women voters, convincing them that despite his opposition to Planned Parenthood, abortion, Obamacare and other women’s issues, he’s their man, too.

She probably convinced a lot of people that she would make a swell first lady, but few that her husband would make a superb president.

It was probably just bad management that Christie seemed to contradict Ann Romney, but the deeper contrast was between the hurly-burly of Christie and the effete nature of Mitt Romney.

Romney is a man with a long record of selling companies and doing deals with the best minds in business. But when it comes to himself, Romney has difficulty making the sale.

Rich men tend to have a hard time in politics: John Kerry, John McCain and Romney have all found being rich a liability. Voters simply do not get the feeling that the rich, however admirable, really know what it is like to be hounded by a debt collector, or to be evicted from a home or a farm.

Ann Romney explained that life for the rich has its own tragedies and suffering. She did not seem to recognize that those same tragedies are compounded in others by poverty. We learned about her pain, but not whether she understands the pain of those less privileged.

Wealth did not impede Jack Kennedy. For Nelson Rockefeller, his name and his money were a problem and an asset. While they probably helped in his election as governor of New York, they were seen as baggage in his presidential attempts.

Dilettantes are treated with suspicion, as though they claim office as just another entitlement.

This will not be lost on the establishments of either party. If Romney loses, then Christie moves up as a very probable contender for 2016. And if Romney wins, Christie, at 50, is still young enough to run in 2020.

Christie’s problem may be the very thing that makes him so refreshing today: his self confidence. Already he has had to back off boasting about what he has done for New Jersey, as unemployment there has crept up. In most of his career as a lawyer, he has been on the public payroll as a prosecutor. He has no foreign-policy experience at all. One has the feeling that Christie’s idea of a foreign country is Manhattan.

Yet Christie the stem-winder, Christie the tough guy and Christie who says he knows when to say “no,” is a potent figure to be allowed for.

Time may make us weary of Christie, as we became tired of Newt Gingrich.

Or it may smooth and enhance him.

He could even learn to say “no” when edibles are available.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS.