Why Giuliani is the scariest possible candidate
Yesterday, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Rudy Giuliani’s bluster towards Iran was unrestrained. He almost seemed to be looking forward to a military confrontation, insisting without proof that Iran is currently building nuclear weapons and emphasizing that the “military option is not off the table.”
Giuliani said every new American president prayed to avoid war, but accused Tehran of backing attacks on US troops in Iraq, and ruled out the notion of America learning to live with a nuclear Iran.
“We have seen what Iran will do with ordinary weapons,” Giuliani told a forum of presidential candidates organized by the coalition.
“If I am president of the United States, I guarantee you, we will never find out what they will do if they get nuclear weapons, because they are not going to get a nuclear weapon.”
The remarks were well received by the partisan audience, but they’re a small reminder of why the public should be genuinely concerned about the prospect of a Giuliani presidency.
Now, I appreciate the context of this. Most Dems will say the prospect of a Republican president in 2009 is inherently dangerous. Likewise, most Republicans will say the same about a Democratic president. Undoubtedly, both sides mean it.
But clearly there’s something different, and altogether more menacing, about the notion of Giuliani in the Oval Office. Josh Marshall on Tuesday described the “truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue.” Matt Yglesias said yesterday that he struggled to find a way to explain how “terrified” he is of a Giuliani presidency, explaining that it would be “a quantum leap of lunacy and just the time when the country desperately needs a clean break and a lurch in the other direction.” Ezra Klein added, “He’s not just another Republican. He’s not even another Bush. He’s constructed a foreign policy team that is almost unimaginably dangerous and aggressive.”
Maybe some specifics will help flesh this out.
The policy advisors a candidate chooses to surround himself or herself with can tell us quite a bit about what kind of policies he or she would pursue in office. That’s especially true when it comes to candidates with no foreign policy or national security experience, such as Giuliani, who has tapped some high-profile foreign policy aides to help shape his worldview on international affairs.
In a must-see, six-minute clip, Josh Marshall explains that Giuliani’s foreign policy team is made up of “all the guys who were too nuts or too extreme to make the cut with George W. Bush.”
For those who can’t watch the video online, Josh identifies Giuliani’s top four advisors:
* Norman Podhoretz: The “Godfather of modern neoconservatism,” who believes America has to go to war with Iran as quickly as possible.
* Daniel Pipes: A man who has “a long and distinguished career of advocating war against every Arab and Muslim country in the world.” He’s also called for racial profiling of Muslim government employees in the United States, who, in true McCarthyite fashion, he believes may be a secret threat to the country.
* Thomas Joscelyn: Giuliani’s terrorism advisor, Joscelyn has argued repeatedly that Saddam Hussein was connected to al Qaeda, and now believes Iran is connected to al Qaeda.
* Michael Rubin: Giuliani’s Iran advisor, Rubin has been closely connected to Ahmad Chalabi, and signed on with Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans in 2002. Rubin, too, has been aggressively for an Iranian invasion.
A very scary bunch, indeed.
The thing is, this is Rudy’s shot. I doubt very much if he’ll remain in politics if he doesn’t win the nomination, never mind the presidency. It’s true that it’s frightening how he went from celebrity candidate to front-runner in the face of all odds that suggested he should have been dismissed out of hand, but that speaks to the rot in the country. However, if Rudy can be turned aside or crushed in the election (if he does win the nomination), I imagine he’ll go back to lawyering again or pursue some goal on the periphery of politics.
Sounds like a bunch of crazies that the wingnuts will love. Gotta hand it to him, Rudy knows who he needs to play to in the primary, eh?
I wish to hell the sane people who still remain in the GOP would stand up and point out this lunacy for what it is, all the lefties in the world will never get through to the wingnut base, no matter how hard we try.
On a more encouraging note, in a recent CBS/NYT poll, no one, not even Republican voters thought attacking Iran was necessary or a good idea. Apparently they’re not totally retarded.
Rudy is nothing more, or less, than Bush 2.0. While he’s very specific about who will get blown up (Iran) he’s AWOL on health, the economy and education – other than to gainsay and ridicule anything proposed by the Dem candidates.
His campaign slogan should be: “If you liked Bush you’ll love Rudy!”
Thanks for this illuminating post.
If Ghouliani has “constructed a foreign policy team that is almost unimaginably dangerous and aggressive,” then why do Clinton, Obama, and Edwards maintain a collegial relationship with him as part of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)? What is it about Foreign Relations that they share in common with Rudolf?
Sorry, I am suspicious of any organization that gives Rudolf W. Giuliani a platform to publish such Orwellian literature as Rudolf’s recent article in Foreign Affairs.
A very scary bunch, indeed.
America would never elect a person whose last name ends in “i,” and it doesn’t matter anyway because Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee.
I want RooDee and his “team of policy experts” to answer one question. Just one question. a teensy, weensy, itty-bitty smidgen of a question:
How will a Giuliani presidency, in ramping up for an all-out war with Iran, deal with the tiny matter that there are several treaties—including military and mutual defense commitments—between Iran and Russia?
Personally—as someone who grew up beneath the shadow of the Cold War—I don’t think it takes very much to envision a “new Soviet Union” under Putin. And his “new Iron Curtain” is going to be built out of petroleum and international/intercontinental pipelines. He won’t have to launch a single missile towards the West; all he will have to do is shut down the pipelines and bury the Iranian coastline along the Straits of Hormuz will anti-ship missile batteries.
America is most certainly not in the position to have oil used as a weapon against it. THAT is why RooDee and his “team” are dangerous
Why Giuliani is the scariest possible candidate
Just in time for Hallowe’en!
Are Micah Marshall and Yglesias trying to be festive??
While the concerns about Rudy and his advisors are legitimate — since I see an American Mussolini in Rudy — I can also see a sleight of hand (or a twist of the knife) by the Clinton machine which has been shifting attention from the Democratic campaign to the general election. At this point, the Clinton machine views Giuliani as the prospective Republican nominee and it is doing its best to hobble him as a psycho even before the two candidates clobber each other in the general.
If the attempted hobbling works, and the mainstream media and the blog community follows, then Clinton will have a stronger chance at winning the general election with her high negatives. So, it’s foreshadowing to be a very very dirty campaign between two candidates that have high negatives.
The way things are going, American voters will be holding their hands to their noses when they vote in November 2008. The question will be — who do I dislike/hate the most?
Also, there’s the New York factor. It’s going to be a Yankees vs. Mets contest if it’s Giuliani versus Clinton. A lot of the country will not see themselves in the two candidates.
Not a good way to unite a nation.
It’s also a general indictment of how badly broken our system of two parties is broken since neither represent the American people.
The difference between Giuliani and Bush is that George fears that he may not be smart enough, he knows he has failed at pretty much everything he’s ever taken on, he confuses exhibitions of macho posturing with real confidence, he needs to belittle others to feel superior, and his emotional development arrested at about age 13.
Giuliani, on the other hand has succeeded in life, but tends to see those successes as much larger than they really were; whatever his involvement is in something that went well, he overstates and exaggerates his role and his importance to the success– he has a huge ego and it needs to be fed on a regular basis.
So, Bush was easily manipulated and steered in the direction Cheney and others wanted him to go – all it took was knowing how he would react to things and it was as easy as pie.
Giuliani’s ego and need to be the star of everything will be no less able to be used by the people who have his ear. The difference is that I see Giuliani as being someone who could easily become an out-of-control megalomaniac, who will be so dazzled by his own importance that he will be blind to the effect his actions have on the country and the world at large.
Bush needed the presidency to prove he wasn’t an incompetent doofus; Giuliani needs the presidency because it is the next step in his quest to be King of the World. That makes him the scarier of the two, and I think makes the US the equivalent of the Titanic.
Lloyd –
I doubt that’s the case. If anything, gearing up against Giulianni at this moment is an attempt to make sure he’s not the GOP nominee. If the Clinton camp is actually doing anything to knock Rudy down, it’s probably because they think he’s the toughest candidate to beat in the general and they want to make sure that someone else on the GOP side gets the nod – like Romney.
But I don’t think that’s going on at all. I think Giulianni is just talking crazy because he desperately needs the “crazy base” vote to get the GOP nomination. So he can’t talk in code words and winks and nods. He doesn’t have the religiosity to pander with. He doesn’t have the hardcore anti-tax loonie cred to run on. All he’s got is a tough-guy image. So he’s pushing that image for all it can get him. That makes him look like a foreign policy loon – but it gets the “first thing we do is kill all the Muslims” folks behind him – and he needs their votes to beat the rest of the GOPer field. Especially now that Dobson and company have put a dent in his “I’m the only one who can beat Clinton” argument by saying that they’ll actively work AGAINST him if he’s the nominee. (It doesn’t matter if they really will work against him or not – what matters is that it puts the “most electable” attribute for Rudy into question, and that was his strongest attribute prior to a month or so ago when the Patriarchs came out to say they hated Rudy’s guts more than any of the other GOPer candidates).
I can’t help but think of Rudy as a narcissistic megalomaniac, so yeah, this is scary. And I think he’d be the toughest to beat, unless Romney starts making speeches about how he has always been a true Christian.
So, yeah, it’s scary. I assume the others are playing to the base with their tough talk, but with Rudy, who knows?
My take is Rudy will LITERALLY do whatever it takes to win. He’s decided to play to what I call the “third pillar” of the Republicans – security/military/authoritarian nuts (the other two are big business and the religious right). It’s really got its roots back in the paranoia of the Southern Strategy and subsequent racist/pro-authority approaches and appeals to militarism.
In short, he decided the winning tactic is a giant war machine.
Does he have a sense of the implications? I don’t think at all. His goal is winning. Period. He’ll do whatever it takes, hire whoever it takes, and start war with whoever it takes to let HIM win. Apparently those telling him how to win have advised him to go to war with everyone.
The thing is, I think he’s too ignorant to see implications of his actions.
For the Republicans, I suspect he’s bad news because he manages to annoy the religious right and I’m sure business doesnt like his bellicose ways. But right now Crazy Base may be all they have left.
Rudie and Hillary. Two New York politicians going for the gold. That’s unusual. If you like the ride down the tubes, Rudy’s your man. If you liked the 2007 DemCongs then Hillary’s your woman.
Rudi is like that irritating guy at the party who keeps butting in to conversations and drooling on your girlfriends arm.
Even more than the Bush Administration, I don’t think Giuliani believes he should be subject to the rule of law. Too arrogant. While I don’t care for most of Romney’s ideas, I believe he would be more competent, more genuinely family oriented, and less likely to bring us to ruin.
Rudy is a dangerous joke but still a joke. Easy to see through and to take down with any real debate or discussion. He doesn’t stand a chance to be the next president because he can not stand any scrutiny. Even the above mentioned argument….Iran did not resort to WMDs even though Sadam was using chemical weapons on them. They didn’t “believe” in using WMDs because as they stated it was inhumane.
The press and the media have just been giving Guiliani a pass on the stupid things he says but sooner or later he will be called on his exaggerations and out right lies. He will be seen for the ego maniac he is.
Face it…about a third of the public has a big mouth and scream loudly all kinds of rabble rousing, lynch mob blather but the rest of us see through it and the recent administration has caused us all to be more discriminatory towards who we will have as president, and fruity Rudy can dress up as 1st lady and the president and practice in the mirror all he wants but he’s still a joke as a serious consideration for POTUS.
***oh Catherine***
…”I believe he would be more competent, more genuinely family oriented, and less likely to bring us to ruin.”
Do you not know his kids hate him, that he paraded around with his mistress on TV while still married in a St. Patrick’s Day parade causing unmeasurable pain to his wife and kids, that he put the emergency command center in the WTC because it was within walking distance of his office and he turned it into a secret love nest. That he has made an indicted child molesting arch bishop part of his business.
God girl, read a little more because I’m just barely touching base here on all the crap Rudy has done that goes against any idea of being family oriented…(wife in hospital for cancer surgery when he announced he wanted a divorce) and “bring us to ruin”…his incompetence got the firefighters killed on 9/11, both before and during the attacks. That’s why the firefighters have been strongly against his campaign publicly…they are trying to tell everyone what an incompetent lying joke this guy is. I’m amazed you could even make a statement like the above…it’s mind boggling given the evidence.
***oh Catherine*** NEVERMIND…I read Rudy instead of Romney…my bad…I’m slinking off now
So hows it comin, been workin on that novel huh ? been goin good ? 3 years got the plot , a little side slide plot twist huh ? submitted a few chapters to the editor ? a little subterfuge to intice the readers huh ?