New Jersey governor Chris Christie has been one of Mitt Romney’s biggest supporters (pun intended) as the keynote speaker at this year’s RNC and one of the most high-profile critics of President Obama over the last months. Just last week he ripped the president for what he called a total absence of leadership. Speaking at a Romney campaign event in Virginia Christie called the president “arrogant” and said, “He never ran anything in his life. The president doesn’t know how to lead. He’s like a man wandering around a dark room, hand up against a wall, clutching for the light switch of leadership. And he just can’t find it and he won’t find it in the next eighteen days.”

Today Governor Christie was singing a different tune, however, praising the president’s swift deployment of disaster resources and the response of FEMA. The big, bold-faced irony here is that Romney and Ryan, whom Christie has been praising, want to close FEMA. Romney said in a debate in June that “we can’t afford” federal disaster relief and that it should be left to the private sector.

Christie told NBC’s “Today”:

The federal government response has been great. I was on the phone at midnight again last night with the president personally.

The president has been outstanding in this. The folks at FEMA …have been excellent.

Christie also said that the president has been entirely focused on disaster relief and has left the reelection campaign behind:

I spoke to the president three times yesterday. He has been incredibly supportive and helpful to our state and not once did he bring up the election.

What was that about groping in the dark for the “light switch of leadership”?