For Christ(ie)'s sake

Chaos theory is kind of a crazy thing, isn’t it? It tells us about the butterfly effect, where seemingly insignificant causes can have monumental effects. A butterfly flaps its wings in Siberia and that causes a hurricane two months later in the Gulf.

But could a butterfly get a man elected President of the United States?

Because some mischievous monarch set itself aflutter sometime last year, Hurricane Sandy struck ground with a devastating effect. Seventy-two Americans were killed, billions of dollars’ worth of property was destroyed and millions of Americans were left without power for significant periods of time.

Sandy was a tragedy, but the funny thing about tragedies is that they beg for a hero.

We got two.

The first was President Barack Obama, whose handling of Hurricane Sandy compares to President Bush’s handling of Katrina in much the same way Michael Jordan’s jump shot compares to my mom’s.

The second hero of our buddy-buddy bromance — a Kevin James to Obama’s cool Hitch — was Gov. Chris Christie, R-New Jersey. Christie, and his effusive praise of Obama, stood in the center of the national spotlight, and Christie garnered a lot of goodwill.

Before Sandy, 50 percent of New Jersey voters approved of Chris Christie. After Sandy, 63 percent of them felt that way. New converts to Christieanity.

And the numbers hold true nationwide.

More than half of Americans like the guy, and I don’t blame them. He’s charismatic. He’s funny. He’s everything good about New Jersey without any of the gross guido-ness of the Shore.

Here’s the kicker, though. In New Jersey, 37 Democratic officials have endorsed Christie for re-election. Those are crazy numbers, because I can count the number of Republican elected officials who endorsed Obama for re-election on one finger.

Nationally, 58 percent of Republicans like Christie. Fifty-two percent of Democrats like him. Fifty percent of Independents like him. In case you failed to grasp the significance of that, a well-known national Republican polls higher with Democrats than with Independents.  

I think I know what explains it. A lot of us Democrats think President Obama’s a pretty cool guy who gets attacked by numerous Republicans for sometimes sketchy reasons.

And young Democrats especially like Obama personally. We saw Christie fiercely defend Obama during Sandy. It lent him a my bro’s bro is my bro aura, so to speak.

One of my liberal friends, bless her simple naiveté, recently expressed her desire to see a Clinton/Christie ticket in 2016.

There are a lot of problems with that, and Democrats should probably stop window-shopping Christie and move on. And they need to do it quickly, because the New York Times tells me he’s already pretty much running for President.

Chris Christie is anti-choice, anti-gay-marriage, anti-support-for-the-poor, pro-drug-criminalization, pro-DOMA and pro-government-surveillance-of-citizens.

He vetoed a bill banning .50 caliber snipers, claiming that such rifles were necessary for “recreational pastimes,” which is true if your pastimes include taking potshots at Decepticons from a mile away.  

And, he doesn’t believe — even after Sandy devastated his state — that climate change is influenced by human activity.

He’s no Kevin James in my “Hitch.” He’s more like that Vance Munson jerk.

So if a damn butterfly gets him elected President, call me an enemy of butterflies everywhere.

— shlumorg@indiana.edu. Follow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.