I went back to Google afresh and grabbed it, same link as above.
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Dear Fred,
You make some strong points. I certainly hope you're right that we're "likely at the end of the long swing to the Republicans that began 40 years ago"; I've sometimes argued similarly (such as the current New York Review of Books), although I'm careful to do so in a very hedged way. If you're right, it improves Giuliani's odds of getting the nomination, because he represents a cleaner break with contemporary conservatism than the other GOP candidates. It's also true that, as the nominee, Rudy puts the states you mentioned into play, although I think New Jersey (the smallest prize of the three) more than California or even New York. The latter two have been so heavily and reliably Democratic at the presidential level--the Schwarzenegger experience tells us little about presidential voting, in my view--that they're heavier lifts for any Republican.
In sum, I do think Giuliani could win a general election; I just don't think he'll make it that far. But let's now assume that he takes the whole tamale. What sort of president would he be?
On the plus side, from the land of compliments so tiny that they're scarcely compliments at all, he'd obviously be an improvement upon the incumbent. You and I know him to be a policy wonk: While I'm not sure, as I said in my first entry, that he can go toe-to-toe with sitting senators on certain national policy questions in a campaign context, I am sure that, if he became president, he'd educate himself quickly. He's also not so disdainful of government that he'd place agencies in the hands of contemptible hacks and ideologues. A Giuliani FDA, for example, would probably return to doing the actual work of the FDA.
o that's something. But it's a comparatively small matter, and the big question to me has to do with the quality that is at the very heart of Giuliani's appeal: his supposed independence. This, as you know, is what made him attractive to New Yorkers in the first place. He was independent of the ossified political culture of New York. He was independent of the national Republican Party--a point he made, when he needed to, on the campaign trail in 1993, the year he first won the mayoralty. He took a further step away from the national GOP once in office, when he visited the White House to endorse Bill Clinton's crime bill. He was independent even of the state Republican Party, as evidenced most dramatically by his support of Mario Cuomo over George Pataki in 1994.
What's interesting about these volitional acts of independence, however, is that they all helped him politically in a city with a five-to-one Democratic voter registration. The same can be said of his support for abortion rights and gay rights.
In other words, what he successfully sold to New Yorkers as "independence" may have been nothing more than a series of political calculations based on the realization that he couldn't survive as a Republican mayor of a liberal city without taking those positions (in the case of the Cuomo endorsement, he was also engaged in a power struggle with Al D'Amato, Pataki's sponsor, over control of the state GOP). So what looked like admirable independence may have been mere positioning.
This came home to me in early 2000, when Giuliani was running (however half-heartedly) against Hillary Clinton for Senate. I'm sure you remember the incident of the provocative, eight-page, fund-raising letter sent out that February to conservatives on the mayor's behalf by Richard Viguerie, which invoked the left's "relentless thirty-year war" on "America's religious heritage" and scorned "liberal judges" who wouldn't allow the posting of the Ten Commandments in the schools. This was a significant and telling event. Giuliani, as mayor, had never talked about religious values. He had also had six years by then to say, as mayor, that he thought the schools ought to be posting the Ten Commandments (the mayor didn't control the school system then, but, as we both know, this didn't prevent him from expressing his strong and numerous opinions on the schools). But he had somehow forgotten to do so.
This episode--using the most (in)famous right-wing, direct-mail expert in the country to put out a message completely at odds with his actual record to that point--said to me that his previous independent stances were matters of expediency, and that he'd flip on a dime on practically any matter if he felt the situation demanded it. And, for those who think one fund-raising pitch isn't evidence enough, consider this: The 2005 Giuliani said that he supported President Bush on the Terri Schiavo affair and would have signed legislation to leave her feeding tube in. What's the chance, Fred, that the 1995 Giuliani would have taken that position? The title of one of my favorite Elvis Costello songs answers the question.
o, back to the question of a Giuliani presidency: How independent would he actually be from the various right-wing elements of his party? The answer depends, to some extent, obviously, on how he will have gotten to the White House. But, if you assume that getting the nomination means making deals with leaders on the right to win their general-election support, I think the answer is "not very."
Where this would leave us on a host of questions is anybody's guess. He would restore a modicum of sanity to Republican politics; he'd probably favor, for example, some form of stem-cell research, and, as I said, he'd let the FDA and other second-level agencies more or less go about their business. But, on the big questions--tax policy, foreign policy, war--I suspect he'd do whatever he felt he needed to do to maintain political power and support. If the right wing is a strong and effective pressure group, that means he'll be as right-wing as he needs to be.
As mayor, he identified a center that was acceptable to New York's white liberals, whose votes and support he needed. But there was no right wing in New York. Well, in America, there is. He'll need the right's support to function as president, and I believe his track record shows us that he'll act accordingly far more often than most people think he will.
All best,
Mike