Rudy can't fail ... can he?
New York knight has made an astounding start in the polls but now faces a year on more difficult ground
Ed Pilkington in New York
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
There are moments in the febrile atmosphere of US politics when you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself what date it is. The pack of at least 14 contestants for the 2008 presidential race are campaigning with the kind of fury associated with the closing stages of an election. Do they know there are still 611 days to go?
One such moment occurred this week when the latest polling intelligence was released to gasps of astonishment. The figures showed that Rudolph Giuliani had pulled ahead of his main rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, by 23%, and is in front of the leading Democrat contender, Hillary Clinton, confounding critics who portray the former mayor of New York as unelectable.
Mr Giuliani sought to capitalise on this good news yesterday when he addressed the people he most needs to convince if he is to secure the Republican nomination early next year - members of the socially conservative wing of the party, holding its annual get-together in Washington.
That he was invited to address the meeting at all is in itself a sign of how far his star has risen. Two years ago the Conservative Political Action Conference, as the gathering is called, rebuffed this pro-abortion, pro-gun control, and pro-homosexuality New Yorker.
The simple explanation for his success is his image as the nation's hero of 9/11. He did not mention his role on September 11 directly in his speech yesterday, but it was the unspoken theme. "What we all need to do, is to understand that America has the right ideas. We should not be embarrassed about ourselves," he said. "We shouldn't have our heads down. Every single one of our problems has to be solved from our strengths. And we have great strength. We are the luckiest people in the world. We have freedom."
The story of what Mr Giuliani did on September 11 is the stuff of legend: how he was told of the first plane hitting the Twin Towers while at breakfast and hurried to the site; how he made a harrowing march through the dust and raining ash of the stricken buildings; and how he addressed the people of New York with a message of hope while George Bush was nowhere to be seen.
That day, famously, turned him into America's mayor, earned him an honorary British knighthood and the title of Time person of the year, and elicited comparisons to Winston Churchill. The glow has sustained him ever since.
After he left City Hall less than four months after the attacks on New York, he become a mainstay of the speaker circuit. In 146 trips to various parts of the US he has built up a fan base, as well as earning the loyalty of at least 170 Republican politicians for whom he has campaigned - two valuable weapons in his would-be presidential armoury.
But the closer he gets to formally announcing his intention to run for the White House, the louder the questions become about his fitness for office. There are the questions about his health as a survivor of prostate cancer, though he is fully recovered, and his relative lack of experience. There have only been two former mayors who went on to become president (Grover Cleveland, Buffalo, 1885; Calvin Coolidge, Northampton, 1923) and both had wider exposure to elected office than Mr Giuliani.
"Right now he's basking in the glow of his 9/11 image," said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But he faces six months of intense scrutiny in which Republicans are going to become much more familiar with his record."
That process has begun, with two books and a documentary raking over his leadership - debunking his record as mayor, and even doubting his image as the hero of 9/11. His achievements during his two terms as mayor were impressive, notably the "zero tolerance" reduction in crime by 57%, and the cut in the murder rate, which fell by 65%. But, according to these critiques, the headlines obscured the backbiting that went on within City Hall under Mr Giuliani.
Flawed or Flawless?, a biography by Deborah and Gerald Strober compiled through interviews with people who knew and worked with him, contains several scathing references. Carol Bellamy, a New York state senator and former law school classmate of Mr Giuliani, told the authors: "There's quite a difference between being strong and fighting all the time. It seemed that, if you could pick a fight or not pick a fight, he picked a fight."
Giuliani Time, a new film by Kevin Keating, argues that his brand of politics polarised the city on racial lines, and increased the gap between rich and poor. It shows Ed Koch, Mr Giuliani's predecessor but one as mayor, saying of him: "He uses the levers of power to punish any critic ... That's why I have referred to him as Pinochet, Caligula. Maybe it's a combination of the two."
The most excoriating analysis comes from Wayne Barrett, a senior editor at Village Voice, and Dan Collins in their book Grand Illusion. They argue that quite apart from being the hero of 9/11, which they call a myth, Mr Giuliani failed to prepare the city for a major attack, leaving it fatally exposed. They investigate the faulty radio systems which put firefighters' lives at risk, and decry Mr Giuliani's decision to place the city's emergency command post, which should have been where the rescue mission was coordinated, in the worst possible position: 23 floors up the World Trade Centre, which was already known to be a favoured terrorist target.
Barrett believes that unless the other presidential candidates or the media begin seriously to question Mr Giuliani's record on terrorism, nothing will stop him. "In a country that is increasingly devoted to spin, it has become almost unpatriotic to question his image as the 9/11 hero," Barrett told the Guardian.
Mr Giuliani faces an uphill fight to convince the most active members of the Republican party, the social conservatives and religious right who traditionally mobilise much of the turnout in the primaries, that he is worthy of their support. In recent weeks he has been making awkward attempts to reposition himself on key social issues. He has invoked the name of his "hero", Ronald Reagan. He has insisted he hates abortion, and would appoint conservative judges to uphold the fundamentals of the constitution.
He has tried too to shrug off the embarrassment of his three marriages, including the way his second wife Donna Hanover discovered he was leaving her when she heard him say so in a televised press conference (after which he sought refuge in the apartment of a gay couple). He told radio listeners in Iowa: "When voters start comparing people's personal lives and the mistakes they've made, you know, we're all going to come out as human beings."
None of which satisfies the likes of Tim Wildmon, president of the Mississippi-based evangelical group American Family Association. "All America appreciated what Mayor Giuliani did for New York and the spirit of the country. But he is disqualified from receiving the support of social conservatives like me, because he's totally opposed to what we stand for. "
So despite this week's polls Mr Giuliani still has a Catch-22 to overcome. He is undoubtedly hugely popular in the country at large, and may well be the Republicans' best hope of holding on to the White House, partly because he comes across as a moderate. But that will count for nothing unless he can overcome the fundamentalist core of his own party, and convince them that the hero of 9/11 is no New York liberal.
