With Rudy Giuliani crisscrossing the country in support of
Republican candidates and raising money for his new political
action committee, it is beginning to look inevitable that he will
seek the presidency in 2008. Despite his lead in many early polls,
skeptics still dismiss his chances of winning the Republican
nomination given his personal background and liberal views on
social issues. There is no doubt that these will be obstacles for
Giuliani, but compared to the forces that will propel him into the
White House, they are small potatoes.
“History is in motion, and those moving with it are so caught up
that they cannot always see its broad outlines,” Mark Helprin once
wrote. Those who count out Giuliani because of the politics of
abortion and gay rights have lost sight of the broad outlines of
our age. The fight against terrorism is not only the defining issue
of our time, but it represents an epic event in the history of
Western civilization. Giuliani is the best leader available to
confront the terrorist threat, which is why the course of history
points to his becoming president.
Epic periods in history have a tendency to produce leaders who
may have once seemed improbable. Winston Churchill was considered
washed-up in the 1930s when he spoke of the rising Nazi menace. But
history took its inevitable course, and by 1940 Churchill had
ascended to the role of Prime Minister, because he was the ideal
leader to fight Germany.
LIKE CHURCHILL, Giuliani is a survivor, a fighter, and a man of
tremendous will. And just as Churchill’s words guided the British
public through solemn hours of German air bombardment, Giuliani
became the spokesman for American resolve on the darkest day of the
nation’s history.
The mere fact that there is a serious debate over whether or not
Giuliani could be elected is a remarkable testament to how inspired
Americans were by his leadership on that day. Normally we discuss
vice presidents, governors, senators or military leaders as
possible presidential candidates. It is rare, if not unprecedented,
for a former mayor to be considered as a presidential candidate so
earnestly by so many people.
Though it has been nearly five years since Giuliani’s leadership
on Sept. 11, a March Quinnipiac University poll found that Giuliani
was America’s most popular politician. Despite his stances on
social issues, a Gallup Poll earlier this month found him leading
all potential Republican primary opponents. On June 13 in
Manhattan, Giuliani demonstrated his fundraising potential by
raking in $2 million for his new political action committee,
Solutions America, in a single evening. That was twice the amount
that his chief rival for the Republican nomination, John McCain,
raised in New York City the day before.
Sept. 11 was not Giuliani’s first brush with Islamic extremism,
and in a sense, his whole career has been building toward a
confrontation with terrorism. As a U.S. Attorney, Giuliani
investigated the 1985 murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the Jewish New
Yorker who was sitting in his wheelchair when he was thrown
overboard from the Achille Lauro cruise ship by
Palestinian terrorists. Giuliani dedicated a good portion of his
1994 mayoral inauguration speech to the first attack on the World
Trade Center. Despite being ridiculed as paranoid, Giuliani built
an emergency command center in New York City to prepare for an
attack. (The center was poorly located in 7 World Trade Center,
which was destroyed with the Twin Towers, but the fact that he was
preparing for such threats before Sept. 11 demonstrates that
Giuliani was ahead of his time.)
AS HE FOUGHT TO TRANSFORM New York City, the New York
Times editorial board and liberal interest groups denounced
him every step of the way. Giuliani’s style of forcefully stating
his position and going on the offensive during press conferences
will win him the respect of conservative primary voters who are fed
up with pandering Republican politicians. In fact, this may be the
main factor that ends up separating him from McCain, whose
reputation as a maverick has been built on taking positions that
made him into a liberal media darling.
Giuliani is more than just a tough talker. Throughout his
career, whether it was as a mob prosecutor, a crime fighting mayor
or an entrepreneur, Giuliani has shown an ability to think
creatively about solving problems. And since Sept. 11, no
politician has spoken with more depth or intelligence about the
nature of the terrorist threat. This will become apparent during
any televised debate with Republican opponents.
Two years is an eternity in politics, no doubt. But no matter
what happens between now and then, the threat of terrorism,
unfortunately, will still be with us and remain the defining issue
of the campaign. Given Giuliani’s record of overcoming long odds,
of achieving things that many people once viewed as impossible, it
is startling that anybody would dismiss his chances of becoming
president. Those who do so are not only severely underestimating
the man, but they are misjudging the trajectory of history.
Philip Klein writes from New York. You can contact him
through his website: www.philipklein.com.
