I wasn’t the only one to notice (duh!) Rudy’s swing through London the other day.
Dan Balz notes that and more:
Rudy Giuliani has adopted a creative strategy for his presidential campaign. By acting like a president, he hopes to turn himself into the presumptive Republican nominee. His rivals have other ideas but so far lack the will to stop him.
For the past two weeks, Giuliani has been waging what amounts to a general election campaign, meeting with foreign dignitaries while smacking around the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, as well as the most prominent symbol of the Democratic left, MoveOn.org.
In London this week, he chatted with former prime minister Tony Blair and posed for smiling photos with Blair’s successor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He also paid a courtesy call on another former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who remains an iconic figure to American conservatives, and received an award in her name from the Iron Lady at a glittery dinner.
How did it go over across the Pond? I’m sure it depends on whom you ask, but the Telegraph’s Toby Harnden was duly impressed:
Rudy Giuliani scored a coup in his White House campaign yesterday by meeting Gordon Brown at No 10, conferring with Tony Blair, receiving an award from Baroness Thatcher and wrapping himself in the legacy of Winston Churchill.
The unprecedented feat of staging a show of genuine closeness to four British prime ministers – three of whom evoke degrees of veneration in America – placed the former New York mayor firmly on the global stage and cemented his claim to be a world leader.
Balz adds some analysis [e.a.]:
A Republican strategist who is not part of the former mayor’s circle of supporters marveled at the images beaming back from Giuliani’s trip. What they conveyed to GOP voters, he said, was the first image of “the post-Bush era with another Republican standing on the world stage.”
In the absence of an argument against his candidacy by his rivals, that could turn Giuliani into the dominant figure in the race. “Time is getting very short for the Romney and Thompson campaigns,” the strategist said.
That sounds right to me: images are of course very politically potent (an argument I’ve made often on this blog about iconography as it relates to our current geopolitical situation and information war). In the absence of a potent countervailing argument (or image), images can stick for good—a point underscored by today’s NYT, which, coincidentally, gave Giuliani the front-page treatment today for his exemplary leadership on 9/11 (they must be kicking themselves, because their timing only underscores Giuliani’s currently excellent PR):
Mr. Giuliani was led through a basement and out onto Church Street, his head and shoulders dusted white with ash. He walked north into the surreal brightness of that day, comforting a police officer and dragooning reporters.
He would walk north two miles, pausing in the bay of a deserted fire station in Greenwich Village to call a television station and urge calm. Three hours later he stepped into a press conference with Gov. George E. Pataki.
“Today is obviously one of the most difficult days in the history of the city,” he said softly. “The tragedy that we are undergoing right now is something that we’ve had nightmares about. My heart goes out to all the innocent victims of this horrible and vicious act of terrorism. And our focus now has to be to save as many lives as possible.”
Inevitably the question arose: How many lost? The mayor looked up through his glasses, aware that among the viewers of this live broadcast were the mothers, fathers, spouses, lovers and children of those who labored in the smashed towers.
“The number of casualties,” he said, “will be more than any of us can bear ultimately.”
That walk north, the spareness of his words and his passion became the founding stones in the reconstruction of the mayor’s reputation, transforming him from a grouchy pol slip-sliding into irrelevancy to the Republican presidential candidate introduced as America’s mayor. The former mayor has made this day the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, aware that millions of Americans hold that heroic view in their collective mind’s eye.
Love Giuliani or hate him or fear him, it’s hard not to marvel at the effectiveness of his photo-op swing through swinging London on this leg of his PRopaganda TM campaign (”You know me; I’m the best.”). His opponents and detractors can sputter about it all they want. Unless they can top it, they will get nowhere.
I’m not saying it’s fair. I’m saying that’s the way it is, and that it’s better to try to face reality so as to be able to oppose him effectively. I also note, glumly, that of the Democratic candidates, Hillary is the only one who will be able to marshall the aura of a world leader (aided as she will be, of course, by her rock star husband).
