What has been suspected for some time is now being formally acknowledged: former Mayor Rudy Giuliani says he’s considering whether to run for President in 2008:
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Sunday he will contemplate next year whether to run for president in 2008.
“I will be considering it next year,” Giuliani said during a visit to Denmark. But he added that playing with the idea of running for the Republican nomination for president did not mean he would actually do it.
“Sometime you warm up and get ready and you don’t get in and pitch,” he told reporters, in a baseball analogy.
There are a couple of things that immediately come to mind:
(1) He shouldn’t emulate Democrat Mario Cuomo. Puh-leaze let’s not have yet another candidate who gets all the cliched comparisons to a Shakespeare character a la Cuomo because he’s contemplating his political navel (or a bit lower), getting the media, potential supporters and potential foes all worked up…then decides not to run.
RUDY: decide quickly and don’t string it out because otherwise it’ll be like Bob Dole without Viagra — an anti-climax.
(2) He has the advantage of being hot in the polls. This will get him lots of media attention and a forum if he decides to run.
(3) He has the disadvantage of being hot in the polls. This will get him lots of media scrutiny and also faces a hazard since the press’ news narrative of a rising candidate is usually followed by a new negative cycle of stories. Then the Candidate Resurrection stories…
(4) He faces an uphill battle. It still appears as if he’d have an uphill battle in the primaries. He’d have to not only run to the right but perhaps run a bit further to the right than he would normally run to win over the more conservative primary voters who still distrust him.
(5) He’ll be caught in a political pincer. If he runs he’ll be lambasted by the right for some of his liberal views and blasted by the left as someone who isn’t liberal enough. He’ll be under fierce attack in the primaries. Does he have the guts for it and also the skills to navigate it?
Some analysts have event mentioned in passing A Battle Of The Big Names for 2008: a Guiliani-Rice ticket versus a Hillary Clinton-Obama ticket. But it’s way too early to assume that will happen…although there have been a lot of developments on the Rudy front in recent months:
—A poll showed that many New York residents want Rudy to run for Prez.
—Actor Michael Moriarty, writing from British Columbia, predicts:
America now, post-New Orleans catastrophe, wants a crisis President, and Giuliani will arrive wearing medals.
My guess is that Giuliani will be the next President. The voters won’t care about his complicated personal life, so long as he’s a strongman, like he appeared to be during 9/11 and its aftermath….
Senator Hillary Clinton, of course, is the wild card in this election scenario, though I believe past actions taken during her husband Bill Clinton’s administration will exclude her as a viable candidate for the presidency. America wants someone who can stand tall during disasters and not provoke them. This of course means Rudolph Giuliani.
But not everyone loves Guiliani. Even in months immediately following 911 he was controversial.
–Guiliani took a different position on Hurricane Katrina than Senator Hillary Clinton.
–Guiliani does well in all kinds of polls.
Guiliani is perceived as the kind of candidate who could get the GOP lots of independent and Democratic voters. But he received lots of criticism during 2004 presidential election campaign when he spoke at the Republican Convention in New York and then energetically and aggressively campaigned for George Bush for President. He was blasted for being so gung-ho but, in sheer political terms, by playing the role he did he paid his dues to the party establishment and activists to earn a right to compete in the primaries. He also wrote a book on leadership that was hailed as being more than your usual thumb-sucking, ghost-written book by a politico.
The question is whether it’s realistic to even think that Guiliani could get the nomination. Katrina seems to have changed the situation a bit — but no one yet knows how much. But it’s true: anyone who has the image of a “crisis” leader is in a good position. Clearly, Guiliani’s fortunes — like George Bush’s — will hinge on unforeseen events.
Guiliani can also argue that he’s a man who has shown true growth: he ditched his comb-over.