A couple of days ago, I tried to figure out why, exactly, Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign offended me more than the other GOP candidates. After all, on a variety of social issues, Giuliani used to be surprisingly progressive — abortion rights, gay rights, gun control — and he even endorsed Mario Cuomo over George Pataki in 1994.
Thompson is more conservative, McCain is scarier, Romney is more craven, and yet I’ve come to think of Giuliani as the single worst credible presidential candidate in recent memory. What’s driving my animosity? Kevin Drum raises a good point which helps shed some light on the subject.
…Giuliani might be the first presidential candidate ever whose entire candidacy is based literally on optics and nothing else. I don’t think he’s offered one single substantive proposal in the entire time since he announced his candidacy. Rather, he’s marketed himself exclusively as a tough guy who knows how to kick butt and put liberals in their place. That’s it. There really isn’t anything more to the man. […]
The purity of his persona-based candidacy is almost majestic.
That’s certainly a big part of it. I expect a certain amount of seriousness in top-tier presidential candidates and Giuliani is, by any reasonable measure, a walking, talking joke. He isn’t running on his record (which he doesn’t want to talk about), or his ideas (of which he has none), or his vision of government (which is vapid to the point of comedy). He’s running because people liked the way he talked at some press conferences six years ago, and he’s parlayed that image into one of the great political con jobs of all time. Worse, at least in the short term, a plurality of Republicans nationwide are falling for the matchstick man’s deceptive pitch.
If you get the chance to see it on C-SPAN, you should check out Giuliani’s stump speech sometime. It’s little more than an extended tirade about how much he hates Democrats.
Indeed, Slate’s John Dickerson recently explained that Giuliani, of all people, “is now the chief heckler of Democrats.”
He called Barack Obama and John Edwards “losers,” has revived the insult of “socialized medicine” when referring to Democratic health-care plans, and now charges the Democrats are trying to bring back the nanny state. He taunts Democrats to use the term “Islamic terrorists,” and when they don’t, he says it’s all the proof one needs they won’t keep us safe. I asked him in 2006 whether he thought Democrats were advocating appeasement with the terrorists. He said he didn’t see it that way. He sure does now, suggesting Democrats would invite another 9/11-style attack. I expect him to start showing up at Clinton rallies and making noises with his armpit.
What’s striking is not just Giuliani’s empty speech, but the stupidity of his attacks. He whines bitterly about a “nanny state,” despite his own efforts as mayor to force cab passengers to listen to recordings about seatbelt use. He’s obsessed with attacking Dems for not using the “Islamic terrorists” phrase, despite the fact that Bush won’t even use the label. He holds himself out as an expert on national security and foreign policy without having any working knowledge of or experience in national security and foreign policy.
Ezra Klein had a terrific piece on Giuliani’s healthcare speech yesterday, which included a fascinating observation:
I’m supposed to be writing about Rudy Giuliani’s health care plan today. And I would, if Rudy Giuliani had a health care plan. But Rudy Giuliani doesn’t have a health care plan. What he has is a pretext with which to attack the Democrats. Indeed, just about all you need to know about Giuliani’s thoughtfulness on the issue can be summed up by the following: In the speech introducing and detailing his new health care proposal, Giuliani refers to the “Democrats” six times. “Single-payer” is said eight times. “Socialized medicine,” or some variant thereof, makes nine appearances. “Uninsured” is never uttered — not once.
Kevin added, “The remarkable thing about Giuliani’s plan isn’t in the details anyway. It’s that it doesn’t even make a serious pretense of being an actual solution to any of our current healthcare problems. Even taken on its own terms, it wouldn’t expand coverage, it wouldn’t help the poor, it wouldn’t contain costs, and it wouldn’t improve care. It literally wouldn’t do anything except provide a tax break for the wealthy, the only people who would benefit from an increased tax deduction.”
And this is the one issue Giuliani has chosen to discuss in detail, except he managed to deliver an entire speech on the subject without including any details.
I can appreciate how desperate Republicans are to find an electable presidential candidate, but is the GOP really prepared to nominate a con man with authoritarian tendencies for the presidency? Really?