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"  Published in the February 2013 issue Ten years ago, when Maryland governor Martin O&amp;#039;Malley was the unknown first-term mayor of a city then known mostly for murder, he initiated a series of television ads that featured footage of some of the most grisly images to be found in Baltimore \u2014 junkies shooting heroin, boarded-up neighborhoods, gangbangers lurking, a child lying dead in the street. At the end of this montage, which showed a city in its death tremens, a single word appeared on the screen: BELIEVE. It was an outrageous image, and extraordinarily powerful, and its message of civic religion \u2014 espousing the faith that people of goodwill can transform impossible situations into something better \u2014 put O&amp;#039;Malley on the map. And that word \u2014 believe \u2014 is also central to O&amp;#039;Malley&amp;#039;s latest pursuit. After a successful run as mayor during which he brought violent crime down by 40 percent, Marylanders elected him governor, in which capacity, now in his second term, O&amp;#039;Malley is slightly less unknown than he was ten years ago. And just as we&amp;#039;ve gotten done with one presidential cycle, he is the one person in the country most plainly running for president in the next. And so, believe. Because just as the old saw says that every United States senator looks in the mirror and sees a president, in the strange alchemy of presidential viability, it is the rule that those peering into the looking glass are also (at least at first, and with rare exception) the only ones who believe that they are meant for a rendezvous with destiny. President Inhofe, anyone? Let&amp;#039;s play a game. Assemble the entire pool of those who have the foggiest chance of becoming president \u2014 including every member of Congress, every governor, every big-city mayor, every pizza-chain CEO and otherwise high-profile business executive, a retired general or two, maybe throw in a billionaire for color. You have now assembled the entire universe of possible presidents of the United States, a list of perhaps 750 people, to be very generous. Put their faces on flash cards, and give careful consideration to each, in terms of their true electability for the office. Or maybe just how they make you feel. You&amp;#039;d reduce the entire stack of 750 to about a half dozen in just a few minutes. Because most people who pay any attention at all have a pretty decent sense of who has any serious chance of actually being president, and they could save all the pretend presidents the trouble of running, not to mention a lot of time, money, and heartache. As Woody Allen once said in a joke about men with toupees: If only their loved ones would tell them. It is now the Beltway bromide that in presidential politics, money is the first and most important primary. But no, this visceral, instinctual, and quick series of binding judgments that we make about a candidate, almost on sight, is the first primary. Among the half dozen flash cards making the cut in this primary is O&amp;#039;Malley, who, in purely cosmetic political terms \u2014 fifty, Kennedy-handsome, gleaming family \u2014 is perfect. A Democrat from a region of growing Democratic strength, and a governor with a solid record who by 2016 will have held executive office of some kind for seventeen years (assuming he runs for reelection in 2014). He is presently courting prominent Democrats in the traditional early primary states and is fundraising aggressively. He has started a PAC to raise money to spread around in midterm races to ingratiate himself to Democrats across the country. The problem he is combating is the existential problem in electoral politics \u2014 his own anonymity. This is not insurmountable \u2014 Bill Clinton was unknown at this stage in 1989. But unlike Clinton, O&amp;#039;Malley will likely be running against some people with legacy names, including someone named Clinton. Of course, the Republicans \u2014 the party of self-made men \u2014 have this famous-name fetish much worse than the Democrats, with four of their last five nominees being the sons of rich and powerful daddies (the exception, it must be said, being Senator Bob Dole, who actually was a self-made man), and even now they fantasize about yet another Bush.  The Republicans would do better to make somebody actually work for it. Which is where New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the Jackie Gleason of American politics, comes in. Because he is such a stunningly different sort of political character, Christie had the unheard-of luxury of having scores of professional Republicans already believing he was The One during the 2012 cycle, after all of eighteen months in elective office. This fandom was owed not to Christie&amp;#039;s leadership on an array of issues, or any special feeling that he among us all was the leader created by these times, but rather to his being a colossal asshole, unabashed and self-styled, and he is quite entertaining in the role. Whatever else Christie is, he is not a phony. The question on the table at the moment is whether he is sufficiently conservative for his party, and whether his party is sufficiently tired of losing to nominate someone as genuinely appealing as Christie (and figure out what he believes later). Rather than run last time, Christie, of course, famously went on to become Obama&amp;#039;s chief antagonist. And then God pulverized his state, and there were Christie and Obama on the Jersey shore, the look of love between them as they came to a near-perfect communion over what government was for after all. Some Republicans groused that cooperating with the only president we had at that fateful moment was unpardonable and cost Romney the election. The fact that this was nonsense didn&amp;#039;t stop Christie \u2014 in a profound misreading of the situation \u2014 from working to mend fences inside the party. He would have done better to do what he does best and publicly call them idiots. And privately demand that they come kiss his ring, and maybe his ass. Because the job he did after Hurricane Sandy has made him more popular, and more formidable, than ever, for the first time a character of true dimension. And if the Republicans are sufficiently tired of losing (which at this point is far from certain), they would do well to stop their grousing, and pay attention. 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<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a18094/chris-christie-martin-o-malley-2016-election-0213/>