New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie discusses his decision not to run for president in an interview with Newsweek. He acknowledges that 2012 might have been his moment and says that he might accept an offer to be on the ticket with Romney.
Christie polled his family about a presidential run, and got a resounding no.
Christie’s oldest son, Andrew, then 17, cut to the chase. “So, Dad,” he asked, “what’re you gonna do?”
Christie opened the matter to a family discussion, asking each of his four children and his wife, Mary Pat, whether they thought he should run for president. “It was really interesting, because none of them wanted me to run,” Christie recalls. His children and wife all said they were ready, if Christie wanted to try for it, but “none of them, around the table, wanted me to run.”
Christie himself didn’t answer Andrew’s question until after he and Mary Pat had put the kids to bed. “I don’t want to do it,” he finally told her. “It doesn’t feel right to me. If I do this, I just feel like I’d be second-guessing myself the entire time I was out there, and I can’t do it that way.”
On missing his chance to be president:
“I don’t know, I guess only the future will tell that,” he said, insisting that he had no regrets. “If I missed my moment, I missed my moment. I mean, I wasn’t pining to be president of the United States.”
On being the VP pick:
“I don’t know how I’ll react if the call comes,” Christie says. “I suspect I’ll say I’d rather stay here. But it depends on what Mitt Romney says to me. I suspect that, between Mitt Romney and I, it wouldn’t just be, ‘Do you wanna do it or not?’ I suspect that that would be a conversation. And I think a lot would depend upon that conversation.”
