Beth Gardiner is a London-based freelance journalists who writes for The Guardian. Or at least this may be the first time she has written for The Guardian as no other pieces that she has ever written for this august journal of record/lefty rag (delete as appropriate) are listed on the website belonging to the “newspaper”.
Gardiner writes about
Rudolph Giuliani, the man who yesterday confirmed that he was indeed
in the running for the Republican nomination for the US Presidency.
“What can the world expect if this pugnacious former prosecutor makes it to the Oval Office? One thing's certain - it won't be dull. The man who became known as "America's mayor" loves a good fight and is always sure he's on the right side.
Maybe there’s a reason
that he is always sure he’s on the right side? Maybe – shock, horror
for a Republican politician in such a liberal city as New York – he
has been proven to be right on so many issues, not least the fall in
crime in the Big Apple that means one is more likely to be murdered
or mugged in London than in New York – all thanks to Giuliani himself.
"Giuliani has suggested he thinks his big-city street smarts can translate into a foreign policy strategy, saying when he backed George W. Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq that his experience fighting crime in New York showed order and security are key prerequisites to progress. So a mayor known for his tough-guy approach could become a president eager to show both allies and enemies who's boss and ready to use military power to back up his words.”
Unlike Clinton, Obama,
Edwards or Romney, Giuliani doesn’t need to convince anyone of his
leadership skills. While he may not have enormous foreign policy experience,
nor did Ronald Reagan when he became President and Reagan won the Cold
War – famously – without firing a single bullet.
“Diplomatic? Fuhgeddaboudit, as they say in Brooklyn. Despite the caring side he showed when his beloved hometown was attacked, Giuliani as mayor was brash, abrasive and cocksure, unwilling to abide fools and never happier than when he was belittling anyone bold enough to disagree with him. Critics saw him as arrogant and high-handed - not qualities Americans are looking for after the bitterness and partisanship of the Bush and Clinton years - while admirers said his confidence and confrontational style were key to his ability to tackle the many troubles of a metropolis long seen as ungovernable”.
There is a world of difference
between being arrogant, high-handed and ineffective – let’s say
like Hillary Rodham Clinton – and arrogant, high-handed and effective.
Not even the Democrats can rationally attack Giuliani’s record as
Mayor of New York. And while Giuliani may well have been a forceful
leader of New York, he is savvy enough as a politician to know that
the position of the Presidency is a totally different role.
Miss Gardiner appears
also to overlook the fact that America is at war – not a conventional
war against another nation, but a war of survival against Islamists
and their fellow travellers in the Democratic Party and liberal media.
“How would that approach play nationally? Americans like a leader who's sure of himself, but a failure to build consensus has sunk the agenda of more than one president. Don't expect President Giuliani to court senators over leisurely lunches - he'd be likelier to tell them, with more than a hint of impatience, what he wanted and when to deliver. And he might have greater trouble with Republican legislators than Democrats.”
Oh dear, oh dear. Giuliani has shown bipartisanship when he was Mayor of New York. Bush showed bipartisanship as Governor of Texas and has offered to do so again with the new Democrat majority in Congress. The trouble with the Left, when they bleat about the need for bipartisanship, is that to them bipartisanship means only one thing. Bipartisanship to the Left means that the Right must kow-tow to the Left’s demands. It rarely means the pursuit of genuine compromise or consensus.
“Indeed, Giuliani's own party is probably the biggest obstacle to his ambitions. He favors abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, all positions that go against the most deeply held principles of many Republicans. For powerful social conservatives, nominating him would mean swallowing a bitter pill - the possibility that Giuliani, despite his Catholicism, might appoint Supreme Court justices who would uphold rather than overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion, and expand gay rights instead of limiting them.”
While she is right to
observe that Giuliani does not appeal to social conservatives’ hearts
or minds on their core issues of “God, Guns and Gays”, she is entirely
wrong to assert that social conservatives are so powerful that they
can destroy a candidate’s candidacy (as was shown in the Republican
primary battle in Pennsylvania when Senator Arlen Spector kept the nomination
despite a strong challenge from a conservative opponent).
Moreover I would imagine that Giuliani will focus on appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court – not simply because Roe vs Wade might be ameliorated or reversed, but for the simple reason that the Judicial Branch has become too active and Giuliani, as a legal and constitutional mind, will want Supreme Court Justices who are faithful to the original intentions of the Founding Fathers.
“Race could be another hot button. It was a central issue in polyglot New York during Giuliani's years as mayor - his relationship with minority voters went from bad to worse as he stood by police through a series of shootings and a notorious abuse case, making many black and Hispanic New Yorkers feel he was deaf to their concerns.
When cops fired 41 bullets at unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999, simmering anger against Giuliani and the NYPD exploded. The mayor dismissed the criticism, defending police and himself in angry press conference tirades. Republican presidents never count on much backing from black voters, but Giuliani's record could mean his support from that quarter is as weak as Bush's.”
Giuliani made it clear that the way to get people of different persuasions to support Republican (and even conservative) policies was to appeal to those individuals as individuals and not to patronize them by pigeon-holing them into different groups (eg: gays, blacks, disabled and so on). He focused on the fact that blacks were more likely to be victims of gang violence and street crime - and he therefore focused the efforts of the NYPD on reducing crime in those communities.
Race industry zealots and stirrers of racial hatred and disharmony might have objected but the facts are simple: crime fell throughout New York and all communities, including blacks, benefited.
“The first family would be the source of plenty of juicy gossip in a Giuliani White House - his personal life is even messier than Bill Clinton's. He acknowledged a close friendship with another woman while he was mayor, and very publicly divorced his second wife, Donna Hanover, who said she learned of his desire to separate from a televised press conference. Giuliani temporarily moved out of the official mayor's residence, Gracie Mansion, to stay in the nearby home of two gay friends, and he authorized his lawyer to make harsh public attacks on Hanover.
That bitterness badly sullied his reputation, although the damage was mostly undone after 9/11. Still, if Judith Giuliani, then the other woman and now the former mayor's third wife, is hosting state dinners as first lady two years from now, it will show that Americans have become downright French in their disregard for politicians' personal lives.”
His personal life is messier than that of Bill & Hillary Clinton? Really? To my knowledge Mayor Giuliani never accepted financial contributions from foreign government agents, raped women, had a string of illicit affairs, had sexual relations with staffers in his office, lied under oath, was impeached, was struck off from practising as an attorney, became embroiled in murder enquiries involving his former personal attorney or a host of other areas where the Clintons found themselves in trouble.
Character is not, with respect, an issue that I would focus too much on if I were Hillary Clinton. That is one of a number of areas where she – and her errant husband – will be found wanting.
“Even before the attacks, he always relished a crisis. Giuliani loved to pull on his Yankees cap and take the helm at his emergency command center during blizzards and heat waves. He always seemed a little silly exhorting New Yorkers to remember their gloves or stay hydrated, but his larger-than-life, father-knows-best persona found its match when the city faced its most terrifying crisis.
That brand of wise, authoritative firmness is what Americans look for in their commander in chief, and it's why Giuliani is polling so well. Bush has sought to convey a similar aura, but while the image was convincing in the days after 9/11, for many Americans it has since worn thin, ruined by the disasters in Iraq and New Orleans.”
New Orleans was Bush’s fault as well? Iraq is an outright disaster? Nothing good has come out of Iraq at all, Miss Gardiner?
One cannot help but feel
that Miss Gardiner is one of those people who would blame Bush if she
stubbed her toe as she went to the kitchen to eat tofu or lentils. “It’s
all a conspiracy and Bush is to blame”, she might wail.
“At a moment when America is plagued by fear about the future, could Giuliani, with his tireless self-confidence and can-do attitude, be the one to reinvigorate it? His pushy Noo Yawk personality is worlds away from Ronald Reagan's sunny demeanor, but he might hope to change Americans' feelings about their country just as Reagan did when he brought optimism to Washington in the midst of economic stagnation.
Can he do it? We may never know. But if he convinces his own party to make him its standard-bearer, New Yorkers may finally get the clash of political titans they were denied in 2000 when prostate cancer forced Giuliani out of what would have been a Senate race for the ages: Rudy vs. Hillary. Only this time the stakes would be far greater.”
Barack who? Ex-Vice Presidential candidate John who? Please, oh please, fantasises Beth Gardiner, let it be Hillary. Please, oh please, say I too. America will not elect Hillary Clinton as President. Let us be thankful for the Founding Fathers’ wisdom in creating the Electoral College.
Even if she won a plurality of votes throughout the US (concentrated in big cities such as LA, DC, Chicago and even New York) there are enough voters – and enough Electoral College votes – to keep America safe from the threat of another President Clinton.
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