Some of the biggest news this weekend involved two ambitious east coast governors overreacting to Ebola. Both New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced mandatory three week quarantines "for all doctors and other travelers who have had contact with Ebola victims in West Africa." This policy goes above and beyond requirements established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and health organizations argue that it unnecessarily penalizes aid workers. Both Cuomo and Christie are harboring presidential aspirations, and they needed to appear decisive as panic was setting in over the first case of Ebola in New York City. The problem with the rush toward appearing decisive, though, is that you're stuck with the decision.

The White House immediately began pressuring Christie and Cuomo to reverse the call for quarantine, with an official telling the New York Times that the governors made a decision that was "uncoordinated, very hurried, an immediate reaction to the New York City case that doesn’t comport with science."

Christie, in his Christie-like style, immediately pushed back hard on his decision. "I think this is a policy that will become a national policy sooner rather than later," Christie bragged to Fox News. He predicted that "the CDC eventually will come around to our point of view on this," and assured the Fox News hosts that he had "no second thoughts about it." A nurse named Kaci Hickox wrote about her experience being quarantined in New Jersey for the Dallas Morning News. "This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me," Hickox wrote. "I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine." (You should read her whole story.)

Less than 24 hours after voicing unequivocal support for his quarantine program, Christie blinked. He lost the staring contest with Hickox. Of course, his backpedaling was issued as a grandiloquent statement that he would allow her to "self-quarantine" at her Maine home. Perhaps it was the White House pressure that caused Christie to change his mind. Maybe it was the fact that Hickox was threatening to sue.

No matter how the behind-the-scenes action went down, it now looks like big tough-guy Christie lost an argument with a nurse. Those residents of New Jersey who are terrified of Ebola now think Christie's a coward who will kill everyone because of a little outside pressure, and more reasonable people see him as a fragile leaf blowing in the wind of public opinion. (Cuomo backed down on the quarantines, too, but he didn't brag on live television about the wisdom of his decision and claim that the scientific community would come around to his way of thinking soon enough.) Can you imagine the campaign ads that will be made out of this debacle when Iowa lurches into caucus season? It's got to be a rough day for Christie's ambitions.