Self-delusion is a hell of a drug

One of the peculiar things I’ve always wondered about when it comes to presidential politics is how governors who aren’t even popular in their home states (no offense to you personally, Governor Jindal) can possibly think they’ve got a prayer of being elected president. Thankfully I now have my answer, courtesy of New Jersey’s own Governor Peter Clemenza Chris Christie:

On “The Kelly File” Monday night, Megyn Kelly interviewed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and discussed why he is — or isn’t — qualified to be president.

In what should have been the interview’s most contentious moment, Kelly noted that polls in New Jersey indicate “by a 65-29 percent margin, [Christie] would not make a good president. They know you the best, why shouldn’t we trust them?”

“They want me to stay,” Christie replied. “A lot of the people in the 65 percent want me to stay. I’ve heard that at a lot of town hall meetings — ‘I want you to stay.’”

Kelly repeated her question more emphatically, saying that “they say you would not make a good president.”

“I think people hear the question they want to hear,” Christie replied, clearly hearing the one he did. “The fact is,” he said, saying nothing, “the polls in New Jersey will go up and down. I’ve been as high as 75 percent approval, as low as 35 percent.”

Uh, OK, but the thing is, Governor, about your approval rating right now…

The poll that Kelly cites — in which New Jerseyans by a 65-29 percent margin do not think Christie would make a good president — also pegs Christie’s approval rating at 38 percent, with 56 percent disapproving. (This represents “his lowest approval rating ever and the lowest approval rating for any governor this year in the nine states surveyed by Quinnipiac University.”) His horrible approval rating is slightly higher than his horrible “would make a good president” rating, so maybe some portion of that 9% sliver of voters are telling Quinnipiac pollsters that Christie would not make a good president in the hope that he stays on the job.

With those numbers, though, I think you have to at least consider the possibility that some of the people who are saying Christie would make a good president are doing it because they’d like him to get the hell out of New Jersey.

But thanks, Governor Christie, for finally answering my question. It’s not that unpopular governors are too dumb to know they’re unpopular; it’s actually that you guys are in some kind of pathologically narcissistic altered state.