I don't think Rudy Giuliani would make for a great president, and I think it might be hard for him to get elected in the country. But there are some undeniable strengths he has that may become more important over time. Andrew McCarthy has some thoughts:
Meanwhile, the once-shining clarity of the Bush Doctrine has dimmed. The great calling of our age, President Bush declared while smoke billowed from 9/11’s wreckage, was to defeat jihadists and quell the rogues who might abet them. He couldn’t have been more right. Five weary years later, though, the administration seems at times to be running on empty. The answer to our great calling has tapered to stabilizing Baghdad — while we abide Russia and China’s enabling of Iran, promote Fatah terrorists in their standoff with Hamas terrorists, and indulge Kim Jong-il’s remaking of the same dozen-year old promises whose flouting has graduated North Korea from extortionist to nuclear extortionist.
It’s hard to blame the president. He’s got to fight for every inch now. He is trying to move forward by meeting his critics halfway — decency they meet with bile. But he is in this fix because his administration has failed to rally the American people to the cause, to make them own it, rather than delegate it to 150,000 of our best and bravest while the rest of us go shopping. The Left has gleefully filled that void. With the help of its media allies, it daily saps the national will to stay on guard and take the fight to those determined to kill us.
I don’t think a President Giuliani would let them get away with it.
As a young prosecutor in the 1980s, I was privileged to work for him when he was the United States Attorney in New York City. By the sheer force of his intellect, his energy and his ability to inspire, he accomplished things that others before him had dared not try — like vanquishing the long entrenched mafia, which has been an epigone ever since his onslaught.
But Giuliani’s greatest asset may have been his unique understanding that success in any great endeavor hinges on the capacity to explain, relentlessly, what you are doing and why. With that, the public can understand and support you, the bad actors are under no illusions about your commitment, and those on the fence are apt to think better about choosing the wrong side. It is a Reaganesque gift.
He's right, and in a fight between good and evil, I'll take Giuliani's guts over everybody else in the field. I'm just not certain that Rudy is studying everything I'd want him to. He's also right about Rudy on the podium. He leaves absolutely no questions open to BS interpretation, and he doesn't tell dumb jokes like Bush. You know exactly where you stand with Rudy and there's no question that the buck stops with him (even if he's taking credit for somebody else's work - hmm, very presidential).
If you think the country is divided now over the war, believe me that Rudy will take no shorts. What do I think? I think we need to win more than we need warm fuzzy feelings at home. Rudy has no problem holding the hardline on law and order but I don't trust his geopolitical vision right now.
That said, I have no confidence in any other of the candidates at this moment. Clinton may have some experience but she'd throw everybody under her symbolic bus.
What softens me on all of the negatives and nullities on the question of Rudy is that he's a moderate Republican like myself. Right in there with Arnold and Christie, he's not playing any holy roller games with American society. He's a New Yorker and he knows that you can lay down rules but you cannot enforce social conventions. That will disarm all the obsessives over the faux evangelist conservatism infecting the GOP, and it will confirm that the Republicans have turned the corner back towards Reagan.
So I'm going to be interpolating between him and Romney. Romney talks a very good game and has a youthful appeal. I haven't heard him slip yet, but I'm thinking maybe he's a little bit too smooth. We'll see. The problem is that I've only heard him field question from Matt Lauer. I've seen nothing of Romney under pressure.
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