You can hear the voices now: “We always knew he was a Democrat!” Has former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani kissed his reported hopes to run for President on the GOP goodbye for daring to say this?Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Bill Clinton on Wednesday over the former president’s counterterrorism efforts, saying recent criticism on preventing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is wrong.
Political bickering over which president _ Clinton or George W. Bush _ missed more opportunities to prevent the attacks has been escalating since Clinton gave a combative interview on “Fox News Sunday” in which he defended his efforts to kill Osama bin Laden.
“The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don’t think he deserves it,” Giuliani said in response to a question after an appearance with fellow Republican Charlie Crist, who is running for governor. “I don’t think President Bush deserves it. The people who deserve blame for Sept. 11, I think we should remind ourselves, are the terrorists _ the Islamic fanatics who came here and killed us and want to come here again and do it.”
You can almost hear the gnashing of teeth in some quarters, repeating the belief that Giuliani is really a RINO and is showing why he should never get the GOP nomination. Defending Clinton??!!??????
But Giuliani continues to be one of the more independent politicos on the American scene who doesn’t march lockstep on all issues. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t support his party and the administration on some matters of importance to the GOP:
Giuliani also said a recently declassified report that said the Iraq war had become a “cause celebre” for Islamic extremists demonstrated the need to continue the fight there.
“The jihadists very much want a victory in Iraq. They feel that if they could defeat us in Iraq they will have a great victory for terrorism,” Giuliani said. “What that should do is organize us to say if they want a big victory in Iraq then we have to deprive them of that victory.”
Uh, oh, then he must be a MINO!
And he is clearly inching towards announcing that he’ll be running:
Giuliani said he was “very interested in considering” a run for president but would not make a decision until after the November election.
That means he’s running. There have been other signs over the past year, most notably reports of some quality staffers being hired by the Giuliani camp (one is John Avlon, the former New York Sun columnist and author of the best, most readable and solid book ever written about centrist politics in America, Independent Nation which you can buy here..)
What can you make of his defense of Clinton?
For one thing, he’s showing that he is not a foaming at the mouth, Clinton hating Republican. To non-Republicans (including many independent voters) there is something truly off-putting and almost pathological about the way many GOPers slip into uncontrollable hate mode when discussing Clinton. Or when they slip into the “but Clinton did it!” mode once someone criticizes the present administration.
So Giuliani is showing that he has a bit more perspective — and underscores it by also saying he wouldn’t blame George Bush, either.
Another possibility is this: perhaps he has sensed that with some key swing voters, the two recent big stinks surrounding Bill Clinton (the ABC movie basically alleging he ignored the terrorism threat because he was too busy in the Oval Office with an intern who was literally working on his staff, plus an ambush interview by Fox News’ Chris Wallace who became a made man with GOPers and Fox’s political skewered audience but lost considerable credibility with many other potential viewers) may backfire.
It’s a given that many Republicans detest Clinton and want to blame him; that isn’t automatically the case with independent voters, who provided Bill Clinton with his big, fat voting victory margins for years. Even if Bob Dole had taken political Viagra, he couldn’t have edged Clinton out with that group.
A final thought. Giuliani seems to be playing his press image a lot smarter than fellow Republican (and many believe prime rival) Arizona Senator John McCain. McCain is in danger of media overexposure. Giuliani seems to pick and choose his actual media appearances and interviews more carefully.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.