A regular reader emailed me last night to suggest that it’s a mistake for me to emphasize the problems with John McCain and Mitt Romney, at the expense of Rudy Giuliani. The former NYC mayor, my emailer argued, is a “bigger force” than I realize, so I should spend some time taking him down a notch, too.
Fair enough. I mentioned Giuliani’s diva-like tendencies over the weekend, but let’s delve deeper, starting with Jonathan Chait’s observation that Giuliani has developed a reputation on national security that he did not earn and clearly doesn’t deserve.
The normal rule in American politics is that if you run for president and your experience comes at the state level, most people will assume that foreign policy is your weak point. You can overcome that political vulnerability — as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and other governors did while getting elected. One would presume that this applies even more to presidential candidates whose highest office reached is mayor. And yet we have the strange case of Rudolph Giuliani.
Giuliani’s presidential campaign is starting to win a cult following among conservatives. It’s not his position on domestic policy that’s doing it — he has nothing to say about that. Lord knows it’s not his social issue positions, which even his strongest backers acknowledge are his political weak point. No, he has somehow built a record as a foreign policy guru despite having no experience beyond the municipal level.
What are Giuliani’s credentials? Everybody knows the basics. On Sept. 11, 2001, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and gave reassuring speeches. He has a tough guy persona. He expresses extremely strong disapproval for enemies of the United States. (For instance, Giuliani has bragged about asking President Bush to let him personally execute Osama bin Laden.)
All this makes Republicans swoon. Sometimes literally.
The charade is hollow and meaningless. Giuliani’s one perceived strength is the one area of his background in which he has literally no experience or expertise. Indeed, security matters are probably Giuliani’s weakest link: he did, after all, put NYC’s emergency-response team in a known-terrorist target, and named Bernie Kerik his top local law enforcement official.
Better yet, Giuliani has demonstrated his knowledge on national security issues by arguing that the war in Iraq is keeping us safer.
OK, so maybe Giuliani is running on a national security platform without actually knowing anything about national security. Surely he brings something else to the table, right? To hear his backers tell it, Giuliani has a personality that exudes “leadership.”
Paul Krugman mentioned this notorious personality yesterday.
[A]s for Rudy Giuliani, there are so many examples of his inability to accept criticism that it’s hard to choose.
Here’s an incident from 1997. When New York magazine placed ads on city buses declaring that the publication was “possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for,” the then-mayor ordered the ads removed — and when a judge ordered the ads placed back on, he appealed the decision all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.
Now imagine how Mr. Giuliani would react on being told, say, that his choice to head Homeland Security is actually a crook. Oh, wait.
Jonathan Alter raised a similar point a week ago.
His ridiculously thin skin and mile-wide mean streak were not allegations made by whiners and political opponents. They were traits widely known to his supporters. Which is why, if you ask Giuliani backers in New York City who was the better mayor — Giuliani or Mike Bloomberg — I’d wager that a strong majority would say Bloomberg. […]
Based on the polls, Rudy Giuliani is now the front runner for the GOP nomination. He could very well be president. Instead of obsessing endlessly over whether social conservatives will scrutinize his record closely enough to see that he is not one of them, we should be debating what kind of president Giuliani — or any of the rest of them — would actually make. Let’s begin by talking about temperament.
Giuliani’s own aides are worried about his “weirdness factor.”
Rudolph W. Giuliani learned that lesson again yesterday when a “vulnerability study,” including warnings about his “weirdness factor” and other perceived liabilities, surfaced from his second campaign for New York mayor, 14 years ago. […]
The “weirdness” question involved Giuliani’s first marriage, to his second cousin. He had his 14-year union with Regina Peruggi annulled on grounds that the Roman Catholic Church had never properly approved the marriage. The 1993 memo said that Giuliani had given a “wide array of conflicting answers” about his personal life, bringing “the soundness of his judgment” into question.
And on a related note:
Giuliani informed his second wife, Donna Hanover, of his intention to seek a separation in a 2000 press conference. The announcement was precipitated by a tabloid frenzy after Giuliani marched with his then-mistress, Judith Nathan, in New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, an acknowledgement of infidelity so audacious that Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer compared it with “groping in the window at Macy’s.” In the acrid divorce proceedings that followed, Hanover accused Giuliani of serial adultery, alleging that Nathan was just the latest in a string of mistresses, following an affair the mayor had had with his former communications director.
Even the National Review, hardly a liberal publication, noted last week that “there is so much evidence in the public record that he is a total jerk,” that Giuliani is in for a rough ride.
What are we left with? An ego-maniac with loose morals, autocratic tendencies, and no real understanding of his principal campaign issue.
Kevin Drum recently argued, “The average voter has vague, positive impressions of Rudy thanks to his 9/11 heroics, and these people are going to be unpleasantly surprised when they see him for the first time in years and he turns out to be nastier than they remember (not to mention being freighted down by a closet full of skeletons they didn’t know about). He has nowhere to go but down.”
Political prognostications are inherently tricky, but I’m hard pressed to imagine Giuliani winning a single primary.
