Commentary: Was this America’s last bipartisan moment in national politics?

That’s a theory floated by former Gov. Chris Christie, who made an appearance at New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on Thursday to talk about President Donald Trump, New Jersey’s budget woes, and his political future.

Christie’s example of bipartisanship stars himself — naturally — and former President Barack Obama, who met Christie on the tarmac of Atlantic City International Airport on Halloween 2012 when Obama came to tour the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy two days earlier.

Christie earned abuse from his fellow Republicans for warmly welcoming a president of the opposing party just days before an Election Day that the GOP had hoped would be Obama’s Waterloo. Not just at the time, but also three years later during Christie’s presidential run, when at least two of his rivals cited the A.C. tarmac moment to attack him. A Fox News host once apologized to Christie for claiming “a million times on the air” that he had hugged Obama.

On Thursday, Christie said he’ll “never understand” criticism of what he thinks was “the last bipartisan moment in national politics.”

“We had $40 billion of damage to our state. The only person who could help me rebuild New Jersey was Barack Obama and the federal government, and my job was to be governor, not the political leader of my party at that moment. It was to be governor,” he said.

There have been isolated moments of bipartisanship in the intervening years. A group of Republican and Democratic members of Congress backed, and Trump signed, a criminal justice reform bill in 2018. Some Republicans voted in 2021 for an infrastructure bill under President Joe Biden, despite a push by Trump for them to block it.

But that criminal justice reform bill passed after that year’s midterm elections, and the Biden bill came far outside the campaign season. When Christie welcomed Obama to New Jersey 14 years ago, we were just days away from a heated presidential race, one that many Republicans had been looking forward to since the moment Obama took office four years before. Christie knew he wasn’t just giving the president a tour of New Jersey; he was helping Obama look presidential at a key moment in his reelection campaign. Christie did it anyway.

It’s impossible to imagine that sort of action today. Even after Trump won a second term and was comfortably ensconced in the White House, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) felt like she had to hide her face from news photographers when she visited the White House in April 2025. If she seeks the presidency in 2028, that moment and a subsequent visit with Trump will surely kill her chances with Democratic primary voters.

Now, Christie is not exactly a paragon of bipartisanship. For every Democrat he partnered with as governor, there’s another he punished for not jumping on board the Christie train. Fort Lee remembers. And surely Christie had personal motives to roll out the welcome mat for Obama in 2012; if he thought an Obama reelection was in the bag, he may also have thought a bipartisan photo op would play well with voters ahead of 2016. 

Even still, on his tarmac moment, Christie is right. He chose 14 years ago to put the immediate needs of his constituents above the immediate needs of his political party. Not only are those moments rare 14 years later, I have little hope we’ll see another moment of its kind any time soon.