Rudy Still the Frontrunner-
The Weekly Standard, Jul 28, 2007
Sioux City, Iowa--Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is wandering around a junior high school computer lab, with an infectious smile. It's the early evening of July 18, and this is Giuliani's fourth campaign stop of the day. In a half hour or so he will take questions from audience members in the school's gymnasium. But right now he is pointing out and reading aloud the signs above the different computers in the lab, which say things like "Dam Control" . . . "Electrical Grid" . . . "Water Supply". . . .
"You know what this is like?" he says. "This is just like . . . a . . . an emergency response center!"
The glee with which Giuliani says this, the joy he clearly takes at being in a room that reminds him of places where he can be in charge, barking orders and leading others, helps explain his appeal as a presidential candidate. It's an appeal that many in the press and in elite Republican circles seem not to have recognized. The conventional wisdom holds that as grassroots conservatives wake up to Giuliani's differences with them on issues like abortion, they will ditch him in favor of someone else. That may be happening to some extent, but it hasn't knocked Giuliani out of first place or undermined the rationale for his candidacy. Despite his variance on some issues with some conservatives and a recent spate of harsh media coverage, Giuliani remains the frontrunner for the 2008 Republican nomination. He continues to lead in national polls and in many state polls. He's winning the money race. And he's preparing for the inevitable counterattack.
Nothing is guaranteed in politics, of course. Charles Franklin, a political scientist and polling expert at the University of Wisconsin, estimates that the mayor's support has fallen somewhat since March.
A combination of factors may have contributed to Giuliani's decline. His aides say the drop in poll numbers is a fall from an "unnatural high," the inevitable result of a competitive, four-way primary between Giuliani, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and McCain. The aides go on to say Giuliani has not yet fully engaged in the campaign, whether through personal retail politics, television and radio advertising, or direct mail. Giuliani has visited Iowa only six times since entering the race. What made this most recent Iowa trip so unusual was that Giuliani held nine events over two days. In the past he has limited public appearances to one or two a day. For now, Giuliani's main concern remains fundraising. Compared with McCain and Romney, Giuliani has spent relatively little money. He has not aired a single television ad. "Romney had $8 million in the bank before we had telephones," says Jim Dyke, one of Giuliani's senior communications advisers.
Last week's Washington Post/ABC News poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents had him running more than 20 points ahead of either McCain or Thompson. In the Gallup poll, after reaching a low of 28 percent support in early June (while still leading the field), the mayor appears to have stabilized at 30 percent. The surveys bolster the Giuliani campaign's contention that his decline has halted. "By any polling standard," Charles Franklin wrote in a July 24 email, Giuliani "is, as of today, the clear frontrunner. He has led McCain in 96 of 108 national polls, led Romney in 104 of 104, and led Thompson in 46 of 47."
Even as his poll numbers dropped, Giuliani's financial position strengthened. He dominated the headlines
surrounding the close of the second fundraising quarter on June 30. He raised more money from individual contributors than any other Republican candidate in the second quarter. He was the only Republican to improve his fundraising from the first to the second quarter. He has the greatest amount of cash on hand, and his campaign has zero debt.
Giuliani's organization has also improved. An aide says the campaign is now focused on publicizing the mayor's hiring of staff and gathering of supporters, while also trying not to exhaust the candidate or those who work for him. Over the last few weeks the campaign has announced new hires in Illinois, New Hampshire, California, and South Carolina. It has announced new endorsements in Iowa, Florida, California, Georgia, and South Carolina. It has released its first radio advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire. It has rolled out a foreign policy advisory board and a justice advisory committee. The mayor gives more interviews than he has in the past, and his staff is more responsive to the press.
None of this matters unless there is a substantive reason for Giuliani's candidacy. The mayor provides 12. He has spent the summer talking about his "12 Commitments to the American People," a collection of policy pledges that he keeps on a small card in his coat pocket. So far Giuliani has added details to four of his commitments: promoting fiscal discipline in government, increasing America's competitiveness in the global economy, appointing strict constructionist judges and enacting tort reform, and moving America toward energy independence. This week, the campaign plans to roll out Giuliani's commitment to reform health care.
Support for Giuliani boils down to two things. The first is determination to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president. Polls show Giuliani is the most competitive candidate against Clinton in a general election. The mayor contrasts himself with Clinton and other Democrats at every opportunity. Michael DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager, has said nominating hizzoner would put states such as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Connecticut, Washington, and Oregon in play for Republicans for the first time in years.
Last week's Washington Post/ABC News poll found that nearly half of the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed thought Giuliani is the candidate with the best chance of winning in 2008. A recent Gallup poll found that 74 percent of Republicans surveyed said Giuliani would be an acceptable GOP presidential nominee. Among self-described "born again or evangelical" Christian Republicans, 69 percent said Giuliani would be acceptable. Leaving a restaurant in Le Mars, Iowa, after Giuliani had spent an hour taking questions, I overheard one man enthusiastically say to another, "How'd you like to see him debate Hillary!"
Then there is the war. It is clearly the most important issue for Republicans today, and it is the issue that engages Giuliani the most. While he leaves considerable room for maneuver on Iraq policy, Giuliani sees the war in Iraq as part of a larger struggle against jihadism. It is a struggle he wants to lead, and one about which he has thought a great deal. Giuliani says he first became interested in Islamic terrorism in the mid-1970s, as an attorney in the Ford Justice Department. While he was mayor of New York, his police department worked on many counterterrorism investigations. Then came 9/11, and Giuliani's elevation in the American psyche to national hero.
When audiences question Giuliani, they tend to ask him about the war and what he would do to prosecute it. In the day I spent following Giuliani across western Iowa, during which the mayor spoke to hundreds of people, exactly two audience members asked him questions dealing with social issues. One man wanted to know about Giuliani's "family, faith, and politics." One woman wanted to know the mayor's stance on gay rights. And that was all. It may be that the audiences who go see Giuliani are self-selected--that is, those voters who would ask social-issues questions know how he differs from them, and so don't bother to go at all. It also may be that the Republican party is undergoing a genuine realignment in priorities.
The rap on Giuliani is that his candidacy is based entirely on his leadership during September 11, 2001, and the days that followed. The truth is that Giuliani rarely mentions 9/11 on the stump. He speaks of it elusively or as part of a list of terrorist attacks against the United States and U.S. interests stretching back three decades. He seems more interested in preventing future attacks than in reminiscing about past terrorist successes.
"The terrorists pose different challenges for us," Giuliani told me. "Terrorists are not armed combatants. A group of people who came back from Iraq about two months ago said to me, 'You know, we'd have this over with in three months if they wore uniforms.' Well, they don't wear uniforms. And therefore, it makes sense to me that they wouldn't get the same benefits that you would get if you were waging war under the banner of a nation-state, a flag, a signatory to the Geneva conventions."
The debate over "torture" illustrates these new challenges. "I don't think America should torture anybody," Giuliani said, "for moral reasons and humanitarian reasons. But when I hear senators say to me, 'If we torture them, they'll torture us,' I think they just miss the point completely. We shouldn't torture because it's wrong. But if we think we're getting any break for that, we're absolutely not aware enough of the enemy we're facing."
Giuliani says many Democrats, and some Republicans, ignore the peculiar issues jihadism poses to the United States. "I don't think they understand Islamic terrorism," Giuliani said. "I really don't. I don't think they have suspended all the prejudgments that you have because you've looked at the world in a certain way for so much of your life, then stepped back from it and said, 'Do these people fit into this way of thinking, this category that we have?' The answer is they don't. It's a different set of things that we have to think about in how to affect them and how to deal with them."
A different set. . . . Giuliani's candidacy isn't about 9/11. It's about American politics in the aftermath of 9/11. And just as the war on terror brings forth new strategies of statecraft and warcraft, Giuliani thinks it will also bring forth a new type of Republican presidential candidate--him--and perhaps a new, or at least different, Republican party.
Giuliani doesn't talk about a new GOP. Indeed, he and his campaign go to great lengths to emphasize his similarities with the conservatives who make up the single largest Republican voting bloc. His policy initiatives and public statements are designed to assuage conservatives. He says he would not attempt to rewrite the Republican platform.
A lot depends on what Giuliani would do if he became the nominee. It seems clear he understands the difference between representing 8 million New Yorkers and serving as head of state and head of government for 300 million Americans. "When you take on different responsibilities," Giuliani told me, "you kind of have to think more broadly. And some of the things that were good for your individual constituency maybe aren't good for your overall constituency."
One candidate seems ready to challenge Giuliani head-on. But he has not officially entered the race and will not take part in any televised debates until September at the earliest. The day after the Democratic-leaning International Association of Firefighters launched an attack on Giuliani, Fred Thompson met with the head of another anti-Giuliani firefighter union in New York City. Thompson exchanged pleasantries with the union boss and discussed counterterrorism and first responders. It was a signal that the former senator may be willing to exploit the former mayor's tangled relationships with the New York City public employees unions. So far nothing else has come of the meeting, which was little noticed outside New York.
The Republican presidential race has entered a fallow period. Not much is happening. This allows Giuliani to continue to build his organization, raise millions, and issue policy statements. "Through the summer the mayor will continue to drive his message, define himself, and set the agenda for this campaign," Giuliani director of strategy Brent Seaborn wrote in a recent email to supporters. The mayor seems to have been successful--so far. The real test will likely come in the fall. That's when his opponents may finally wake up to the fact that Rudolph Giuliani has a better chance than they do at winning the Republican nomination.< |
