Is Chris Christie stronger than the storm?

Maybe there's something in the water at the governor's mansion in New Jersey.

For the second time in recent years, I found myself transfixed yesterday watching the governor of the Garden State put on a tour de force performance.

Maybe you remember the first time. Does the name Jim McGreevey ring any bells? "I am a gay American." That was 2004.

Nine years later, it was Chris Christie's turn.

The governor is neck-deep in a scandal involving a plot to create a traffic nightmare on the always manic George Washington Bridge that connects Fort Lee, N.J., with New York City. I have been over that span any number of times ferrying my daughter to Boston. I can assure there is no good time to do it. I have tried them all. To think someone would intentionally concoct even bigger headaches for drivers using the bridge is hard to imagine.

But that is exactly what happened, apparently cooked up by some of Christie's aides as payback for the mayor of Fort Lee, who was not supporting Christie's re-election bid.

Yesterday, just weeks after he jokingly mocked reporters for their questions about the story,a mortified Christie came forward and faced the music.

I'll give the guy this. He was good. Very good. It was about as good an apology as you will ever see, and simply dynamite political theatre.

Christie said all the right things, that he was "embarrassed and humiliated."

He fired his chief of staff and cut ties to his former campaign manager.

After his lengthy statement, Christie answered questions, which didn't take long to get the question that politico's are always asked in these instances: What did you know and when did you know it.

Christie insisted he was blindsided by the story, which he vows he first heard about when it broke Wednesday morning. The governor maintains he had absolutely no knowledge of the traffic plot, and more than that, he was heartbroken that key aides had lied to him.

Naturally, with the smell of blood in the water, the sharks were circling. Christie went toe to toe with his inquisitors, at one point sounding absolutely Nixonian by saying, "I am not a bully," just as the former president had once tried to reassure the nation that "I am not a crook."

Christie's problem is that he has carefully developed that reputation, as a hands-on guy who is not afraid of the rough-and-tumble aspects of big-time politics, even the nasty kind practiced in New Jersey.

Now that reputation leaves many slack-jawed trying to believe that this same guy who micro-manages everything had no knowledge of what his aides were up to, or that his aides would be so bold as to embark on such a plan without the knowledge of their boss.

A new poll out yesterday still puts Christie in the lead among GOP presidential contenders, but of course that was before "Bridge-Gate" erupted.

One thing is certain. Christie, with his bravura performance, left no wiggle room. If anything else comes out that links him to this sorry caper, he's done.

For now, he will remain in defense mode, trying to fend off the sharks.

Christie is not going to get out from under this cloud for awhile. Yesterday he did all the right things, he sounded sincere, he apologized, and he went face-to-face to offer his mea culpa to the mayor and citizens of Fort Lee.

But he's now out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

Water under the bridge? Not by a long shot, governor.