Overheard with Evan Smith - Mark halperin & john heilemann - Excerpt 2

The reality is, the Christie approach by these folks to Christie itself was remarkable because as much as we thought Christie kind of looked at the race and there was some interest, you spend a lot of time detailing what you refer to as the Hamlet of Drumthwacket, Drumthwacket is the Governor's house in New Jersey and how he's walking up to the edge of being Mario Cuomo of this race and not being able to decide and what do I do? and agonizing about it, ultimately decides not to run but Christie really was looking at this a fairly, a lot, fairly late into the cycle. Much more closely than anybody thought and much more closely than he ever admitted until the day that he announced he wasn't going to do it. Right. Up until that moment he kept saying nothing's changed, nothing's changed, I'm not going to do this. In fact, in private he's on the phone with George W. Bush, he's on the phone with Barbara Bush, he's on the phone with, meeting with donors, big donors like Ken Langone, the founder of Home Depot, he's meeting at his house with Karl Rove to go through the steps of what it would take. He's doing a lot of stuff, and then of course doing some stuff publicly like going to the Reagan Library and giving a speech there, he's doing a lot of recon for a guy who claims he's not at all looking at the race and then at the end when it's time for him to decide, he says I'm going to decide on this weekend, he gets to the end of that weekend and he still hasn't made up his mind. He still needs one more day. Taking it seriously. To wrestle with his mind, which tells him, you know, maybe this could work, and his gut which tells him I'm not sure I'm ready for this. Ultimately the gut prevails over the mind in this case. But again, the fact that he was considering it, born of angst over Mitt Romney's chances as we discussed before and, of course, his own ego played a role in this. My favorite thing in the entire book, as I've shared with you, when Governor Christie decides ultimately not to run, he brings Mitt and Ann Romney to his house to tell them he's decided not to, you know, to give them his prized endorsement in the race and Ann Romney says Governor you have no idea how big this is that you're endorsing us and Governor Christie says... Yes I do Yes I do...I do know how big this is. And I thought, this guy. I hope this guy runs. To see this guy and Rick Perry, for instance, in a race together, knocking heads would be something else. Well part of what, the timing of Governor Christie's intense consideration of this was around the time that Governor Perry got in. He didn't think much of Governor Perry and thought Romney would probably be the nominee but the fact that Rick Perry was being treated as such a serious candidate by a lot of people, really got under his skin to some extent and made him think if this is what the big dog in this race is going to be, I should be in this race, maybe this is my moment to run. And something we write about in both Game Change and Double Down which is this notion of, you have a group of people, not very big, but you know recognizable who think someday I'm going to run for president and the question they always face is, is this my time, can I wait 4 more years? And Governor Christie's case, he decided I can wait four more years and history might decide that was a great decision or maybe he missed his moment.