NY Times Magazine on Rudy Giuliani

Author Matt Bai writes on Hizzoner in an article headlined "Crusader."

The logic of Giuliani’s pitch to voters on terrorism will feel familiar to anyone who paid close attention to his political ascent. When he first won office in 1993, New York was widely considered a city beyond governance, an uncontrollable metropolis where violent crime, entrenched bureaucracy and swollen welfare rolls were accepted as the grim but unshakable realities of urban decline. Rudy ran as a real S.O.B., the guy who had the steel to restore order and sanity where no one else could or would. Whatever you think of Giuliani personally, it’s hard to argue that he didn’t succeed; crime and the welfare rolls plummeted for the first time in decades, while jobs and neighborhoods came back. Giuliani maintained an uneasy détente with the overwhelmingly liberal pool of voters who had chosen him for the job. He did the dirty work that made their city, at long last, livable and safe, the things their political correctness would never allow them to openly countenance. For their part, New Yorkers made a show of disdaining him at dinner parties for his bullying ways and pitiless programs, but they slept better knowing that Rudy was wrestling the city’s myriad demons.

Now Giuliani is running to become that same kind of president. In Giuliani’s view, we live in a dark time, caught up in the opening stages of a war with Islamic radicals that may span a few decades and several continents before it’s won. A president has to be willing to be the bad guy, to do the things that may make even his allies uncomfortable, and to do them with ruthless efficiency. So you wouldn’t want to have a beer with me, Rudy seems to be saying. So even my own kids don’t want to have a beer with me. But whom do you really want staring down the terrorists — me, or one of these other guys? Do you want someone squeezable, or would you rather hire the single-minded enforcer who had the testicular fortitude to tame New York?

Giuliani’s presidential campaign brings to mind that famous scene from “A Few Good Men,” in which Jack Nicholson lectures a boyish Tom Cruise on the practical realities inherent in protecting freedom. In Giuliani’s telling, only a thin wall separates innocent Americans from the violent apostles of a brutal and repressive ideology. You want me on that wall, Rudy would have us believe. You need me on that wall.

Inevitably, presidential campaigns take on the peculiar personalities of the candidates themselves. Bill Clinton’s aides worked without sleep and always behind schedule. George W. Bush’s team couldn’t conceal their Texan arrogance. Giuliani’s campaign staff is remarkably — almost unnervingly — disciplined. His campaign appearances inevitably begin and end on time. Each day of campaigning has a theme (“trial lawyers are bad,” “adoption is good,” etc.), to which the candidate lashes himself without fail, while high-powered surrogates back in Washington issue carefully timed statements backing him up. The campaign is unusually guarded with routine information, giving out only Giuliani’s public schedule, and almost no one associated with the campaign will talk to a reporter without a press aide listening in on the line.

When I first managed to track down Giuliani on the western edge of Iowa in mid-July, I was more impressed than I expected to be. In the abstract, after all, it’s hard to imagine the slashing mayor of New York getting on famously with the people of Sloan, Iowa, a one-strip farming town of about 1,000 people. (Motto: “A Good Place to Grow.”) But Rudy out of his element turns out to be a surprisingly deft campaigner. Ever the prosecutor, he retains a talent for explaining complex concepts, flipping his round spectacles on and off his face for emphasis and rubbing his forehead as if deep in thought. He has a penchant for talking to voters as if he were their tough-love therapist, frequently invoking words like “reality” and “denial.” Vowing to end illegal immigration during one town-hall meeting in Iowa, Giuliani told the crowd, “Every other country does it, and we can do it.” Then he clutched his heart and spoke softly. “It’s O.K. to do it.” You could almost hear a collective sigh among the Iowans, who didn’t consider themselves bigots just because they wanted to seal the borders, and who now felt validated by America’s mayor. They lined up for autographs.