The Dark Side Of Rudy
There are two main knocks against Rudy Giuliani by friend and foe alike: one, that he’s too moderate to win the Republican nomination, and two, that his temper makes him unfit for the office of the presidency. Jonathan Alter is leaning towards the second camp:
Over the last decade, I’ve seen both good Rudy and bad Rudy up close. The question for voters as he enters the presidential campaign is: which Rudy Giuliani will show up on the trail—and which Rudy would go to work in the White House? And if even a little of the bad Rudy is still around, does that make him temperamentally unsuited to the presidency?
…The question is whether a prosecutorial and authoritarian approach is right for the highest office.
It’s a good bet that Giuliani would be a strong commander in chief. If terrorists attacked again, he would know what to do. But how about the next month? And the month after that? The president is more than a crisis manager. He’s also the defender of the Constitution and the leader of his party. He holds a moral and intensely political position that calls for great skills of conciliation. If FDR had a famously “first-class temperament,” how should we describe Rudy’s? Third-class?
Of course it’s always possible there’s a “New Rudy.” He once told me that his experience with prostate cancer had changed him. But we saw a “New Nixon” in 1968 and a “New Gore” in 2000 and we all know what they looked like. It’s hard to change who you really are, except around the margins.
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.
We’ll see. One thing to watch for: almost every campaign runs into that blooper or snafu that makes people ask, “Can X recover from this?” When Rudy hits that bump, how he reacts may confirm or deny Alter’s suspicions…
This is a nice counter to Alter’s column holding up Hillary’s temperament to scrutiny, and wondering whether she is “temperamentally unsuited to the presidency?” HAHAHA. These continuing transparent attempts to undermine Giuliani’s candidacy before it gets started are amusing. As I have said, and many others of course, Giuliani worries Democrats more than any other Republican nominee. We can expect more claims of his “unsuitability” and “he can’t win the Republican nomination because of social issues,” and so on right up to the the day he wins the election in an easy electoral victory.
Oh, please. Jonathan Alter? Him having the long knives out for Giuliani just shows how scared liberals are of him winning. Every time I see a liberal attacking a Republican, I know it means that’s a repub the liberal’s are afraid will beat their own candidate. Notice how no one writes about Duncan Hunter? Why? Because he’s got no shot. The liberals are scared to death of Giuliani because he’ll clean anybody’s clock in the general election. They’ ve got to destroy him now.
Just for the record, I agree with both of you – the volume of these anti-Rudy screeds says everything about how badly he scares the Democrats…
Clean their clock in a general election? So attacks on somebody on the other side indicate a real fear?
In light of that, this must be proof positive that Obama will beat everybody, right?
Actually, Fargus, I think that’s true. I think Republicans are far more worried about Obama in the long run than Hillary. Hillary Clinton is a known quantity. Obama isn’t, and his appeal is much the same as Giuliani’s; he’s the outsider who doesn’t start off with lots of people hating his guts, and I think the American people are looking for a something to break the viciousness of recent partisan debates. Obama may be the person. Hillary Clinton isn’t.
I think Giuliani’s temperment is an important issue. My impression of his mayorality was he did better fighting crusades than in day-to-day stuff. That was good in New York, because there were a lot of crusades that needed fighting (welfare reform, crime fighting, battling the entrenched bureaucracies, etc.). I think as president, he would fight harder than most of the other candidates against the ever-growing government, and that’s one of the reasons I’m intrigued by him. But I do worry that some of his more petty, controlling behavior could undercut him.
However, I’m not sure we’ll ever know for certain how his temperment has changed. As Mark noted, there may be a campaign bump that provides insight. Maybe not. Ultimately, any presidential election is about trying to get a sense of the candidate’s judgment in unforseen circumstances, a tricky business no matter who is running.
I’m in the third camp which is the one where Rudy is just an unethical and corrupt scumbag. The way he humiliated his wife on live television is reprehensible. He cheated on her for a dozen years and then dumped her on tv. Then there is all the corruption and cronyism inside his mayoral office. He is a power-hungry nutjob.
But why are “civil rights leaders” so critical of Obama? Aren’t they supposed to be on the same side?
Party of the prickliness comes, I think, from the fact that Rudy is a man of action, and doesn’t take kindly to the foot dragging and ass-covering that is so prevelant in governmental bureaucracy. I remember about 12 or so years ago, David Letterman used to have a segment where he would set up a camera next to some enormous pothole in the streets of New York and see how many days it took to get it fixed (with daily updates to his audience). I never saw how Dinkins handled it, but Rudy would respond by putting on a construction hat, grabbing a shovel, and filling the pothole himself. It made for good TV, obviously, but I also think it reflected his management and leadership style.
first i would like to pin out , would somebody please tell me what remarkable thing goulini did , honestly his political career was over before 911 , and i’m sick and tired of people saying that he cleaned up new york , yes crime went down due to his gustopo like tactics that he used against minorities , liberals , taxi and squeegee man , and the homeless seriously , if you think about it if you put somebody within the system that goes in the statistics on crime progress waging war on pot heads and people with petty liquor warrants is not sufficient strategy in reducing crime that “totalitarianism” yes he made the exterior of 42nd street look good , only for the cooperations that control it.
yes he was a good figure head in making the nation believe that things were under control , but look at the deeds that this man committed while he was in office , brutality went up , if your idea of busting heads is strategy fighting crime , if you really want to reduce crime create more vacational programs or education institutions ,the wage war on welfare was only set out to evict people out of there homes , who you going to evict the whole family just for one deeds , if anyone who want to retaliate against that statement , you just cant kick out your teenager while you have custody , that antics was only help privitized public housing like they are doing all over the country , he screw up funds for the board of ed . housing which to laid off employees matter of fact he tried to slash budget for transits and other city organizations , there is alot of money missing that was unaccounted for that were never question