I’m flying to Florida today, but last night did a phone-in with a small radio station in New Hampshire. With all the attention on Iowa in the last two weeks, the NH’ers are getting a bit restless. And again I’m asked where Rudy is. I’m wondering about the Florida strategy. I understand South Carolina, but abdicating New Hampshire? I’m just a policy wonk at heart, so I’ll trust in Rudy’s strategy team.
How pissed off did McCain look last night? His absolute hatred for and disgust with Romney couldn’t have been more obviously pronounced. Watching his exchange with Romney over torture was positively Shakespearean.
But that’s why McCain has no shot. He carries around with him too much rage, righteous indignation. And as the Bushes crossed McCain big time back in South Carolina, they know McCain’s not capable of forgiving and forgetting, and if he ever gets the chance…so they’re doing everything they can to make sure he never gets that chance.
The Bushes and their allies’ biggest fear is not a Hillary victory in ‘08. The Clintons and Bushes have long standing understandings and arrangements between them. The Bushes and their allies’ biggest fear is a McCain victory because then you might actually see investigations and trials. The level of resentment and contempt McCain feels for conservatives from his generation who didn’t serve never ceases to amaze.
Can somebody speak honestly here for a moment? With the exception of Rudy, everyone on that stage last night is a clown. Huckabee looks and sounds like Gomer Pyle. Romney is straight out of central casting, as president of the uptight fraternity in Animal House. McCain, I must admit, possesses life gravitas, but he comes across terribly unstable and impatient, not the sort of man you want with a finger on the nuclear trigger. Duncan Hunter was also occasionally intriguing but his close ties with fellow veteran and San Diegoan Randy “Duke” Cunningham and those wild alcohol, prostitutes and contractors parties, could prove damaging down the road.
Which brings us to Rudy, brought up in the rough and tumble of New York ethnic life where he defeats his enemies and rises to the top. A lawyer who actually understands the law and the processes of government, Giuliani sounds human, a rarity in modern politics. (You don’t believe me? Go listen to David Chapelle imitate a white person, then close your eyes and listen to Barak Obama. They’re the same person.)
But for our purposes, listen to Rudy explain a position, and what do you hear? Nuance, intellectual competence. Listen to the other guys answer a question, and it’s like drifting into an episode of the Mouskateers.
My mind is made up. I hope yours is as well.
One thing this Annapolis gathering has taught me: America’s next president needs to be tough, a “gangsta” as my twelve year old son would say. These sheikhs play hardball, forever lying and maneuvering. I shutter to think how they would laugh at Romney and his Mormon can do, golly gee ways. But Giuliani, he would fit right in. He would be respected, feared.
With dwindling oil supplies and the rise of China and India, we need a New Yorker, a boss, a throwback to the Luciano/Lansky days, someone so strong that he was able to put away the heads of New York’s known Mafia families and live and prosper and go on. Rudy was also there on 9/11. And in this game, knowledge is power.
It struck me this week that while our adversaries abroad resemble warlords, American politicians seem to prefer cheerleading and toe tapping. If I wasn’t sure before, I am now. The barbarians are frothing at the mouth, pounding at the gate. Rudy comes from a tradition with experience keeping its neighborhoods safe from minority troublemakers. His experience in the micro will surely benefit us in the macro.
Let’s see tonight how Rudy counters Plastic Romney when he brings up Kerik. “A strong Don needs a strong consigliere, especially in war time, you grinning Bible salesman.” That’s what I would say.
With the current spat between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney over their respective claims to lowering violent crime rates, there is but one question to ask:
What is a leader?
A man who wasn’t afraid to kick Yasser Arafat out of a crowded symphony hall even when world opinion momentarily and naively sought peace. When conventional wisdom drove city leaders to beg and cow at the feet of minority activists, Rudy ignored them, attacked them, exposed them as hypocrites. The mayor made a habit of never apologizing, even after alleged instances of police brutality, and it served the city well, freeing its streets from the grip of anarchy and minority activists. Where hippies and anarchists once ran wild, squatting private property, multi-million dollar condos and boutique hotels now rise up in their place.
Ours is not a time for abstract ideology. Ours is a time to be practical, to be strong against cynicism and disorder. When Rudy was mayor, protesters mocked his Italian heritage, branding him a fascist. The word fascism has been sullied forever, fairly so, by the National Socialist movement. But in actuality, it is the approach most suitable for turbulent times. Sure, we have to be careful and mindful to avoid the twin traps of anti-semitism and socialism, but in Rudy Giuliani we need not worry.
Rudy Giuliani is not and has never been an anti-semite. His greatest allies are Jewish and he has been a consistent supporter of Israel. And you can’t accuse him of being socialist. He did more for private business and property than any mayor before or after him. So he leads with authority. What exactly is wrong with that? Nobody criticizes a football coach when he believes in his mission to the exclusion of any and all distraction. We should expect at least as much from our leaders.
Kudos to Matthew Continetti on his excellent piece in the Weekly Standard called Rudy Giuliani, Disciplinarian. He concludes thusly:
Just as Giuliani disciplined an anarchic city, so too would he try to discipline a disordered world. “Civilization must stand up and combat the current collapse of governance, the rise of violence, and the spread of chaos and fear in many parts of the world,” he wrote in a much derided, and little-studied, recent essay in Foreign Affairs:
I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a city, normal life rapidly reestablishes itself: shops open, people move back in, children start playing ball on the sidewalks again, and soon a decent and law-abiding community returns to life. The same is true in world affairs. Disorder in the world’s bad neighborhoods tends to spread. Tolerating bad behavior breeds more bad behavior. But concerted action to uphold international standards will help people, economies, and states to thrive. Civil society can triumph over chaos if it is backed by determined action.
The boldness of such a metaphor–that the world is nothing more than a really, really big New York City–is unmistakable; a Giuliani presidency would test whether or not the metaphor actually is true. One thing is clear, however. You sometimes hear that Giuliani is a cipher, that he has hidden or downplayed his true self in order to appeal to the Republican primary electorate, and the American electorate more generally. Nothing could be further from the truth. His instincts, his thoughts, his goals, his tactics, his audacity–it is all there in the open, like it or not, as it has been from the beginning.
