To some, it's Barack Obama, the antichrist, vs. Chris Christie

(Bloomberg) --With all the crazy talk of President Barack Obama being the antichrist, it’s sort of amusing that the anti-Obama is a guy named Christie.

To understand the political force sweeping our country, one need only search the words “Chris Christie” on YouTube. The New Jersey governor’s town hall appearances have received hundreds of thousands of hits and glowing comments because the man, like Ronald Reagan before him, has an uncanny ear for what troubles Americans.

The truth is, a mensch like Christie could never have emerged in American politics if super-slick Obama had not enraged so many Americans first. If Jimmy Carter created Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama created Chris Christie.

Americans put their faith in a cocky Obama who wowed “The View” crowd in a bathing suit. But he gave us a government that didn’t know its own boundaries, defied common sense and fueled anxieties in post-financial crash America. Now the people of New Jersey have put their faith in a man who looks like the rest of us in a bathing suit.

Democrats might like to believe that the backlash embodied in the Tea Party movement is nothing more than a carnival of fools, headed for nowhere. But Christie is in touch with the national sense of unease that animates the Tea Party movement, and at town hall-type gatherings he has shown a grittiness that as drama surpasses the best reality TV shows.

On June 15th, Christie appeared at a town hall meeting in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The crowd assembled was hardly a stereotypical BMW-driving Republican audience, looking like a group that could represent any small town in America

One senses that these Americans rarely gather all in one place, and that when they do, the gravity of the moment is palpable to them. And then Christie says, “our way of life is being challenged by an economy where we have too much debt, too big a government, too much spending and taxes being too high. We all know it in our hearts…we all understand that the day of reckoning is here.” And while he speaks, the people gather -- even Wilda Diaz, the Democratic mayor, seem to nod in agreement.

As Christie concludes that the people in that room have a chance, that “we are going to be the people who fixed New Jersey’s problems,” the audience members have the same look on their faces that the troops have in the old war movies, just as Sarge tells them that they probably will not succeed, but they are going to charge up the hill and attack the machine gun nest anyway.