I don’t know which is worse: the liberals using Christie as a rally flag for the failing Obama campaign or the conservatives bashing him for daring to say something nice about the president.

One of the first things I read this morning was the insipid Susan Estrich praising Christie. Usually, if Susan Estrich agrees with a Republican, he must have done something wrong. Later, the guy who passes for a conservative over at the WaPo is criticizing Christie for the exact same statements.

Seriously people, get a grip?

Is Christie sucking up to Obama to get more aid for his state? Maybe. Is he positioning himself to win the 2016 nomination? I doubt it. For one thing, he probably could have won the nomination THIS year if he had run. For another, I’m pretty sure Christie reads the polls and realized Romney has a pretty good shot at winning this thing. Is Christie just a craven opportunist boosting his own reelection campaign? Well, he’s a politician so I guess that’s always a possibility.

But to me the important issue is that we have apparently completely lost our ability to put aside partisan sniping during even the worst tragedies. Is this really what we want? So, no Republican governor can ever praise a Democratic president over disaster response? What kind of response do you think the next Republican governor will get then when he requests help? Then when we get our next Republican president, the Democrats can refuse to acknowledge he ever does anything well and he can ignore THEIR states. Now no politician on either side can ever say a kind word about the other side without being tarred and feathered by his own party and used as a campaign ad by his opponents. That’s gonna do a lot for legistlating (not to mention good old fashioned civility.)

So according to Chrisite, Obama has had a good response to the storm damage? Great. I’ll put that at #2 on my list of things I think Obama did right (behind “gave the OK to kill Osama bin Laden.”) Was that so terrible?