A fascinating article and video at the New York Times about Rudy Giuliani’s temperament.
The dyspeptic, “not afraid to suggest his opponents have really deep-seated psychological problems†Republican mayor of fact and legend has taken a holiday. What’s left on the presidential campaign trail is a commanding daddy of a candidate, a disciplined fellow who talks about terrorism and fiscal order and about terrorism some more.
Mr. Giuliani laughs, he gestures expansively, he even pokes fun at his tendency to wax a wee bit authoritarian. (He suggests a touch of the cane was necessary to impose discipline on that liberal asylum known as New York.) He shakes hands with reporters he once viewed as “jerky†and assures them he is fine with tough questions about abortion, where he has settled on a position supporting a woman’s right to choose, and about gun control, where is he at least halfway into a policy back-flip…
If Hillary Rodham Clinton is the nurturer warrior and Barack Obama the college idealist and John McCain the tough but irreverent flyboy, then Mr. Giuliani is the father, the talk-tough-on-terror, I’m-comfortable-wielding-authority guy…
He has honed his speaking style. His mayoral excursions tripped merrily through the land of ego and id, with all manner of growls. Challenge him, as one unfortunate did on the mayor’s weekly radio show in 1999, urging him to legalize ferrets as pets, and the best advice was to duck.
“The excessive concern that you have with ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist, not with me,†the mayor advised. “You are devoting your life to weasels.†“There is something really, really very sad about you,†he added.
Now his sentences are taut three-step progressions that end with a pleasing verbal whap! So he disposes of the Democrats’ insistence — since rescinded — on setting a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. “Has any army,†he says, then pauses, “ever been required,†then another pause, “to give a printed schedule of its retreat?â€
In the video, Michael Powell, explain a little bit more how Giuliani changed since, say, 1999. He found it interesting to look at Giuliani and ask: in how far did Giuliani change?
Giuliani was an aggressive mayor of New York. He “blasted away rhetorically,” as Powell puts it. Now, Giuliani presents himself as a very reasonable candidate, no anger problem here…
As Powell puts it, one gets the impression that Giuliani can switch his temper off if he so wishes. In other words: he is able to control his temper.
Will Giuliani explode?
I doubt it: as Powell explains, Democrats thought in 1993 that they could make Giuliani “snap.” Sadly for them, Giuliani “didn’t curl a lip:” he stayed calm, no matter what the Democrats did.
Giuliani: the man with a controllable temper?
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