9/11, The "Gift" That Keeps On Giving

("Chris Christie's Bid Gains New Life as He Invokes 9/11 Amid Fear")

Forget the dismal employment numbers, the pension fiasco, the tunnel to nowhere. Disregard the mistreatment of teachers, of Kaci Hickox. Don't fret his abusive manner and certainly deep six anything and everything Bridgegate. It is time to recall 9/11, the "gift" that for Chris Christie, much as Rudy Giuliani before, keeps on giving.

Mr. Christie could touch the seminal moment in our history, could smell its burning embers, see its cloud of death. For a politician whose presidential hopes were on life support, the recent events in Paris served as perverse rescue.

For those like Mr. Christie and Donald Trump, who are masterful at stirring up the fear and hatred, there is nothing that plays better to audiences then damage inflicted upon us by "others". Whether they be immigrants from Mexico coming to take our jobs, Ebola victims from foreign lands come to infiltrate and infect us or refugees from Syria come to terrorize, Mr. Christie will play upon our worst instincts like Paganini on a violin.

And Mr. Christie, like the former mayor of New York, can tell you of the personal pain and intimate details of the horror that was thrust upon us that terrible morning in September of 2001. Disaster, on this level, is Mr. Christie's ultimate political weapon.

In the concluding line of today's article, a New Hampshire resident and Christie convert worries of those in her state that "they can't all see him." I have the same concern.