The pitch to voters, nationally and in New Jersey where he is up for re-election on Wednesday, is clear. While Washington was at its bickering worst last month, Christie was running TV advertisements saying compromise - anathema to some Tea Party types - was not a dirty word.
Subtlety is not a Christie virtue. "He tells like it like is," says Joe DiVincenzo, a local Democratic Party boss from New Jersey who has endorsed Christie, something that reflects both Christie's cross-party appeal but also his credentials as a politician.
It is a long road to those 2016 hustings, but Christie is more than just a good talker, he is that most elusive of Republicans: a man for whom Democrats and independents could also vote.
Proof of this will come this week when he is expected to be re-elected with a near two-thirds majority, not half bad for a Republican when you consider President Barack Obama won New Jersey with 58.4 per cent of the vote in 2012.
When the returns come in, says Patrick Murray, a New Jersey polling expert, the analysts will also be looking at Christie's numbers with Hispanics and African-Americans, two demographics that rejected Mitt Romney but where any successful Republican presidential candidate will have to erode the inbuilt Democrat lead.
Last week, basketball great Shaquille O'Neal endorsed Christie, calling him a "great man". Christie is polling at 30 per cent among African-Americans in a state where historically most Republicans are lucky to scrape 10 per cent. For all these reasons, he is already attracting big donor support.
It is a powerful package, aided by the fact that from January, Christie will be the new chairman of the Republican Governors Association, giving him the perfect excuse to travel the country and start to build the national networks that will underpin a 2016 campaign. Bill Clinton held the Democrat equivalent of that position as Governor of Arkansas in 1989, at the same point in the electoral cycle, and went on to win the White House three years later.
There is one major stumbling block: half of Christie's party cannot abide him.
A year ago, when Superstorm Sandy flattened large parts of the Jersey Shore on the eve of the 2012 presidential campaign, Christie burnished his bipartisan credentials, embracing Obama in the ruins and giving the President breathing space just when Romney needed a boost. Many on the right considered it treachery. Which leaves Christie in a bind: the same bipartisan qualities that make him appeal to a general election crowd are a liability when it comes to winning the nomination of his party.
The one saving grace for Christie is he is so alienated from the Tea Party crowd that there is no point in lurching right, as Romney did, and then trying to be a moderate in the national campaign, according to Murray.
"Christie has one route to the nomination, and it is already clear. He becomes such a dominant establishment figure that other moderates decide not to run. The whole strategy relies on a number of conservative candidates splitting that right vote."
These are early days - Jeb Bush, the former Florida Governor and brother of George W., has been making some interesting calls, according to one Republican donor - but one thing is certain: the world will be hearing a lot more from Chris Christie.
A steep rise
A lawyer with self-made parents, Chris Christie failed in small-time New Jersey politics but was handed a way back by George W. Bush, who in 2001 appointed him US Attorney for New Jersey, the senior federal government prosecutor in the state. Christie's appointment was scorned as nepotistic - he had raised funds for the Bush campaign - but he seized the chance to launch a clean-up of New Jersey's corrupt politics, giving him the public platform he needed to win the governorship in November 2009.
