Myth has made the man: 9/11 not enough for Rudy's Prez run

Rudy Giuliani runs for President, if he runs, from the same place where George Bush still tries to run his war in Iraq - from the rubble and ashes of Sept. 11.

Giuliani doesn't run from any city he still governs, or any state, or even from the U.S. Senate. He runs from a place called Sept. 11, and you would, too.

Giuliani runs, if he runs, from a job to which he was never elected, just appointed. Or perhaps anointed. It's the job of America's Mayor, and it is the best job he is ever going to have, one with which he can have a longer run than a Supreme Court justice if he plays his cards right.

When you are the mythical mayor of America, instead of a declared candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, it means nobody wants to talk about what kind of mayor of New York City you were before Sept. 11, 2001. That is a real good thing for Giuliani.

There are a lot of reasons why Giuliani should quit while he is ahead in some of the polls, but the best is this: the inevitable collision between some of the myths that have grown up around him in the last six years and the facts.

If the other guys in the race just let him run on Sept. 11, let that be the only thing in play - "It really is all people see," one veteran Democrat said last weekend in New Hampshire - then he wins the nomination. Only it doesn't work that way, not in a world where everything is in play, and where the whole process, with each passing election, becomes dumber than Britney Spears.

The only thing Giuliani has run since leaving office is the booming franchise of Giuliani. He has written a huge best seller and made a small fortune giving speeches all over the world. He has run a lucrative consulting business, one that enables him to fly down to a place like Mexico City for a few days, explain to them how they can reduce the crime rate and then he pockets big change.

Only now he sounds as if he is talking himself into making a run for the nomination it is hard to see him ever getting, one that is hard to see him ever getting from the yahoos in his party, even if he is ahead in some polls the way Hillary Clinton is ahead, mostly for being famous.

But Giuliani ought to ask himself how he gets the nomination of a right-wing, red-state party with his positions in favor of stem-cell research and gun control and gay civil marriages and abortion. If he really does make his run, how do those views play on the Dick Cheney news channels, or in the Church of the Religious Right?

Giuliani ought to ask how long he will be on the stump before everybody starts banging away at him with Bernard Kerik, his police commissioner and former business partner, someone Giuliani thought would be a tremendous head of Homeland Security after turning the job down himself. Kerik is another one who wants you to think he cleaned up crime in New York City all by himself, another guy with a badge who thought the law applied to everybody except him.

Kerik will be in play the way Giuliani's second wife, Donna Hanover, and the way she found out about the breakup of her marriage on television, will be in play. So will the whole subject of race relations in the city during Giuliani's time running it. And even the conditions under which the rescue workers worked at Ground Zero.

Did Giuliani find the best in himself during those first days after the planes flew into our buildings? He did. He did his job and, in doing that job, got carried along by the best in the city, as if he was one of the ironworkers who came walking over the bridge from Stuyvesant High School that first afternoon, coming from everywhere, carrying their tools in leather bags, the ones who told the police, "We're here to work."

And when the police asked them how that day, the ironworkers said, "We cut steel, you're gonna need us." And kept walking towards the ruins of the World Trade Center.

When people see Giuliani now, they see that. They see it all, with Giuliani in the foreground. They see the city getting up, slowly at first, then defiantly. The life of the city changed forever that day. So did Giuliani's. No longer was he a man with a complicated life running the world's most complicated city. He was seen as a hero.

America's Mayor. He runs, if he runs, from there. And if it was only that, if how you did that day and in the days to follow, he wins. It isn't the only issue. There are a lot of them with Rudy Giuliani and always were and always will be.

He never ran for the Senate in the end; he never ran for governor. Now the yes-men he's always had around him tell him he can get the nomination for President. It would be easy if it were all Sept. 11, 2001. The problem for Giuliani is Sept. 10.

You say you don't support him, yet you keep offering up argument after argument favoring Rudy.

Just because the guy is not a good candidate for President doesn't mean that he's evil or that his fellow Republicans should stand by and let him be slandered. You clearly don't know your Reagan too well.

Reducing taxes was really the only option left to Rudy and the City Council.

Not according to the City Council it wasn't. They fought him tooth and nail.

But I'm more concerned about it being the abortion capitol of America myself.

Sad to say, but NYC is far from America's abortion capital. Per capita there are far fewer abortions than in Atlanta or LA. And Giuliani didn't introduce abortion to NYC.

No one expected Reagan to abolish the income tax system.

And no one expected Giuliani to abolish the NYC income tax system. Yet you're busting his hump about it when you won't bust Reagan's about the federal.

As the MI pointed out, Rudy`s tax cuts offset the Dinkins tax increases from a few years earlier.

Indeed, they were the first actual rollback of taxes in NYC since the Civil War. But he didn't abolish all taxes, so that accomplishment means nothing. Giuliani also failed to colonize Mars for NYC while he was mayor.

NYC is still a liberal city. Run by liberals, for liberals.

Another Giuliani failure, he failed to magically transform NYC's electorate from a supermajority of liberals to a majority of Reagan conservatives. He also failed to transmute base metals into gold! Oh, is there anything wrong with NYC for which Giuliani is not personally responsible?

I had left the city because it became a terrible place to live in the 1970`s.

I see. You're a quitter.

Giuliani wasn't.

Frankly, I'm not the one running around making excuses for Rudy Giuliani and defending his liberal record.

His record, quite frankly, isn't liberal. Every policy he implemented in NYC was more conservative than the existing policy it replaced. The problem is that his policies will never become conservative enough for national office.

I'm not the one denouncing the Manhattahn Institute, a friend of Rudy`s, you are.

This is sad. The MI was not Giuliani's "friend" - Giuliani was their customer. He purchased consulting services from them for part of his mayoral administration. Perhaps you're the kind of guy who thinks the checkout girl and the supermarket really likes you personally because she smiles at you. She doesn't really dig you - you're just a customer.

You're the one who went bonkers.

According to my FReepmail box, you are the only one on planet Earth who believes that I was the person who went "bonkers" on this thread.

Why do you have such an obsessive animus against Rudy Giuliani that you feel compelled to post columns by lefty liars just to slander the guy?

He's just a substandard GOP presidential candidate in a large field of substandard wannabes. You seem to think he's the Antichrist or something. All he is is a Rockefeller Republican who has a head for administration.

You clearly don't know your politics too well. You're the one comparing Giuliani to Reagan. Not me. Giuliani is a liberal. Reagan was a conservative. Huge difference. Stand with whoever you like. Just don't preach to me how good of a Republican Rudy is, when we all know he's a liberal RINO.

If you don't believe me, look it up. More abortions take place in NYC then any other city in America. NYC is America's abortion capitol. And the last time I looked, more abortions took place in NYState then anyother state in the union. With 2/3rds of all abortions occurring in NYC. Rudy supports Roe v Wade, abortion on demand and is opposed to a ban on partial brith abortions. Its a liberal, anti-life thingy. Rudy is no conservative. Rudy is pro-death!

Moving out of NYC was the best move I ever made. Guess that makes me smarter then the average New Yawker. I see you call New Jersey home. My best friend here in Colorado is from Jersey. His wife is from Bay Ridge Brooklyn. In fact half my friends out here are from NY. Like me, they were smart and moved. You're still letting northeast liberals take you for a ride. LMBO Whats that say about you?

>>>>His record, quite frankly, isn't liberal.

The Manhattan Institute disagrees with you and so do I. Most Freepers call Rudy a liberal. The Founder of FR calls him a liberal. You need to wake up and get conservative. Look up liberal in the dictionary and you'll see a photo of RudyG.

>>>>The MI was not Giuliani's "friend"..

Rudy was on board with the MI since the 1980`s. The MI is a 501(C)(3) non-profit organization. Its a political think tank and Rudy has been one of their biggest supporters through the years. In political terms, Rudy and the MI are "friends". He's accepted many speaking engagements at the MI and even gave a quote for the MI`s 25 anniversary website edition. Look it up on their website.

>>>>>All he is is a Rockefeller Republican ...

A Rockefeller Republican is a liberal.

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