Chris Christie to announce decision on White House race

The Chris Christie boomlet appears to be drawing to a close.

The New Jersey governor is expected to make his decision regarding the 2012 presidential race official Tuesday afternoon, likely ruling out one final time a run for the White House.

For months, Christie has insisted that he will not run for president, saying among other things that he did not think he was ready to step into the office. But he found himself under new pressure in recent weeks as Republicans surveyed the field of announced candidates and still found it lacking.

He has scheduled a news conference for 1 p.m. Eastern time/10 a.m. Pacific time in Trenton, N.J. Candidates for president don’t proclaim their national ambitions at the office of the job they are seeking to leave.

And indeed, multiple media outlets are reporting that Christie, indeed, won’t run for president.

The announcement comes on the heels of a report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that said Christie had told new Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Meg Whitman that he would not run for president in return for her agreeing to host a fundraiser for him in California.

And if a Christie run seemed unlikely in the first place, the move by Florida to shift its GOP primary forward to the end of January made it appear downright foolhardy. With states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada all expected to advance their contests into January, Christie and a hastily assembled campaign team would have been scrambling from the get-go.

There were other factors. For one, Christie declaring for president two years after winning the governorship would have come off as, well, somewhat Palinesque. The timetable had always been centered on the 2016 race or beyond. Second, it remained unclear whether Christie, a Northeastern moderate in many respects, would have been able to win over the kind of hardcore conservatives who are currently driving the GOP.

At any rate, should Christie decide to take a pass it probably means that the Republican field is, indeed settled, unless Sarah Palin does attempt a truly “unconventional” campaign. (And Herman Cain’s surge may be tempting her to give it a hard look.) With no new champion on the horizon, unhappy Republicans will have to settle upon Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Cain, or someone else remaining in the field.

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