President Obama to travel to New Jersey tomorrow, inspect damage with Chris Christie

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma will trav­el to New Jer­sey tomor­row to inspect dam­age caused by Super­storm Sandy with Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Chris Christie.

The Pres­i­dent will spend his time “talk­ing with cit­i­zens who are recov­er­ing from the storm and thank­ing first respon­ders who put their lives at risk to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties”, White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said in a state­ment a few min­utes ago. Fur­ther details will be made avail­able shortly.

Ear­li­er today, Gov­er­nor Christie had high praise for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s lead­er­ship dur­ing the storm. His effu­sive com­ments already have some Repub­li­cans fuming.

“The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment response has been great. I was on the phone at mid­night again last night with the pres­i­dent per­son­al­ly,” he told NBC’s The Today Show. “The pres­i­dent has been out­stand­ing in this.”

“The folks at FEMA… have been excellent.”

He sound­ed sim­i­lar notes on MSNBC’s Morn­ing Joe. “It’s been very good work­ing with the pres­i­dent,” Christie told host Joe Scar­bor­ough. “He and his admin­is­tra­tion have been coor­di­nat­ing with us. It’s been wonderful.”

And on Twit­ter, Christie also had a mes­sage of thanks:

I want to thank the Pres­i­dent per­son­al­ly for all his assis­tance as we recov­er from the storm.

— GovChristie, 7:28 AM East­ern Time, Octo­ber 30th, 2012

Asked by Fox whether Mitt Rom­ney might come to New Jer­sey to do the same thing Oba­ma will be doing, Christie retort­ed (in clas­sic Christie fash­ion), “I have no idea, nor am I the least bit con­cerned or inter­est­ed. I have a job to do in New Jer­sey that is much big­ger than pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics. If you think right now I give a damn about pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics, then you don’t know me.”

In Colum­bus, Ohio, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden spoke briefly to the White House press pool about the storm response. Asked how Sandy would affect the elec­tion, Biden replied, “I don’t know. I hon­est to God don’t think peo­ple thought much about that at this point. It’s just main­ly mak­ing sure peo­ple have elec­tric­i­ty. Big cities like Newark, Man­hat­tan, even parts of Philadel­phia are with­out ener­gy and could take some time to get elec­tric­i­ty back, real­ly seri­ous problem.”

Asked to com­ment on what might hap­pen to FEMA (the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency) if Rom­ney wins, Biden took a pass.

“No, look. I think FEMA is doing incred­i­ble job.  I wish you guys could have been on the phone with all of the gov­er­nors. Uni­form­ly they were incred­i­bly grate­ful to [FEMA Admin­is­tra­tor] Fugate and the president.”

“FEMA has been reor­ga­nized. It’s doing one hel­lu­va a job,” Biden added. “It prepo­si­tioned resources. The gov­er­nors are all coop­er­at­ing with one anoth­er. The may­ors are coop­er­at­ing. I’ve nev­er in all my expe­ri­ence seen as much coop­er­a­tion, and acknowl­edge­ment of that coop­er­a­tion, from city, state, fed­er­al lev­els. So it’s work­ing like it’s sup­posed to. And I’m real­ly proud of our team, and I’m also proud of the way the gov­er­nors have all stepped up with the mayors.”

“Hear­ing the may­or of Philadel­phia and the gov­er­nor of Penn­syl­va­nia, two dif­fer­ent par­ties, talk­ing about the coop­er­a­tion. Hear­ing Christie talk about the coop­er­a­tion he has with the may­or of Newark.”

“The key is, as cold as it is here, it’s cold as hell in some of these places where peo­ple don’t have any ener­gy, don’t have any elec­tric­i­ty. And it’s going to take a her­culean effort. We even have the state of Cal­i­for­nia try­ing to get cher­ry pickers.”

Biden also side­stepped a ques­tion about when the pres­i­dent might resume cam­paign­ing. (Leave it to the White House press pool to bring up politics).

“I’ve nev­er seen a guy so focused,” Biden said. “The last con­ver­sa­tion we had he said to the gov­er­nors, look folks. I’m up late at night. If you don’t get imme­di­ate response from my folks, call me. Here’s my number.”

“So this is hands-on deal right now to get every­thing done.”