Rudy’s the one

I’m not the first one to say it (I think Chris Matthews has been pushing Rudy Giuliani for a while, and there was a blogospheric Rudy eruption earlier this week).

This article, in which we follow Rudy to three events in South Carolina, lends credence to the notion that Rudy will a) run and b) beat McCain for the nomination.

He’s certainly got a winning message:

The 2000 election, Mr. Giuliani said, had taught him just how important politics really is. While the election had seemed a relatively frivolous one at the time, suddenly — on September 11, 2001 — it mattered a great deal who was in the White House. “Sometimes, elections are more important than we realize when we’re in them,” he said.

While he tied that argument to the 2006 midterm elections, the real message was clear: The coming presidential election isn’t about the Confederate flag, it’s not about Roe v. Wade, it’s not about whether New York’s former mayor has had some marital troubles — it’s about who will lead America in the War on Terror. Some conservatives might not see eye-to-eye with this Blue-stater on social issues, but this is a new world we live in.

“I think it’s going to happen … we can’t keep this country 100% safe,” Mr. Giuliani said about the prospect of another terrorist attack on American soil, adding that he’s “surprised” we haven’t been hit again thus far. What’s more, he said, Republicans shouldn’t shy away from “politicizing” the War on Terror in fighting the Democrats. “You don’t have to politicize a war,” he said. “Wars are political … It’s our right as Republicans to argue our case … There’s a big difference between our party and theirs.”

Judging from the responses (not the number of responses but rather what the respondents liked about Giuliani—namely, his proven leadership),

Mr. Butler, speaking to me after the fundraiser, said that Mr. Giuliani is currently his top choice for the 2008 primary. “I know he did a good job in New York City, and I think he’s just a good man,” Mr. Butler said. He added, “I think he would garner a lot more votes than anyone I could think of right now.” …

I asked the woman sitting next to me — Camilia Huntley, a North Carolina Republican born and raised in South Carolina — what she thought. “He’s the one,” was her to-the-point reply. Pressed, she said that Mr. Giuliani’s abortion position did trouble her, but it wouldn’t sway her vote. “He has shown such great leadership in New York,” she said. And, Ms. Huntley added, she just doesn’t trust Senator McCain as a leader in a crisis — for reasons, she said, she couldn’t quite articulate.

I think Giuliani could win not only the Republican nomination but also the presidency. But then I happen to agree with him that confronting terrorism is our number-one priority.

And I think he’s going about it in the right way already: on the homefront. That’s not only a smart move politically for him. It also serves us as a country, I think. We really need to have a debate about “politicizing the war.”

The only reason Democrats want to avoid “politicizing the war” is because they’re on the losing end of that argument: for the last 30 years, they have been known as anti-war, regardless of the war. They are stuck with that image because they have done nothing to change anyone’s mind.

Michael Walzer diagnosed this in his spring 2002 essay “Can There Be a Decent Left?“…which, of course, the “left” has ignored (emphasis mine).

But the [Afghanistan] war … was a preventive war, designed to make it impossible to train terrorists in Afghanistan and to plan and organize attacks like that of September 11. And that war was never really accepted, in wide sections of the left, as either just or necessary. Recall the standard arguments against it: that we should have turned to the UN, that we had to prove the guilt of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and then organize international trials, and that the war, if it was fought at all, had to be fought without endangering civilians. The last point was intended to make fighting impossible. I haven’t come across any arguments that seriously tried to describe how this (or any) war could be fought without putting civilians at risk, or to ask what degree of risk might be permissible, or to specify the risks that American soldiers should accept in order to reduce the risk of civilian deaths. All these were legitimate issues in Afghanistan, as they were in the Kosovo and Gulf wars. But among last fall’s antiwar demonstrators, “Stop the bombing” wasn’t a slogan that summarized a coherent view of the bombing–or of the alternatives to it. The truth is that most leftists were not committed to having a coherent view about things like that; they were committed to opposing the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks.

This worldview, which Walzer characterized in the spring of 2002 as “leftist”—and as a problem of indecency on the left—is now, in the summer of 2006, no closer to being resolved. Indeed, it is the currently central issue among Democrats (witness Lieberman vs. Lamont). One could argue, on the basis of the pornographic media coverage of the civilian casualties in Qana, Lebanon—which brought hysterical cries for an immediate cease-fire, despite Israel’s just cause in its war against Hezbollah—that this worldview has also infected the media.

That’s a problem beyond Democrats vs. Republicans on the American homefront. That’s a really big problem, period.
Perhaps Rudy, who is a hundred times as articulate as Bush, who is not only not religious but is demonstrably flawed (divorced, etc.), who is socially tolerant, and who is a formidable debating opponent, will make the perfect foil for the Democrats, who really do need to get their act together. They need to get over being reflexively anti-war, and most of all they need to get over themselves.

I do have to laugh, however, when I see that people think Rudy is moderate. He was a D.A., fer chrissakes. Rudy is The Enforcer.