New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie needs to come clean on a statement he made during Thursday night’s joint appearance with nine other Republican candidates for president.

He said something about being “appointed U.S. attorney” on Sept. 10, 2001, a day before “the world changed forever” during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Oops, governor.

Not so, sir.

President Bush appointed Christie to be U.S. attorney in New Jersey on Dec. 7, 2001. But to make some kind of argument against U.S. Sen. Rand Paul during the Thursday night “debate,” he said he’d been named to the job the day before those attacks and that on the day of the attacks he was “hugging” family members of victims.

Look, I happen to like Gov. Christie. I hope he does well during the upcoming GOP presidential primary campaign. I like his no-nonsense approach to problem-solving, his sometimes-blunt talk, his can-do attitude — and I even like the fact that he hugged Barack Obama when the president came to the Jersey Shore to inspect the damage done by Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy on the eve of the 2012 presidential election.

However, he need not inflate his resume by putting himself a tad too quickly into a federal office just to score political points.

It’s unbecoming.