Right Wing Nut House

Most Americans are familiar with the heroic narrative involving New York city mayor Rudy Guiliani and his actions on 9/11. As the horror unfolded on that tragic day, Rudy was everywhere; walking the streets covered in dust and ash from the fallen towers, before the cameras trying to both assure the citizens of New York while hammering home the fact that casualties from the attack would be “more than we can bear.” His presence - both commanding and calming at the same time - established a public personae of a no-nonsense, take charge guy with compassion and empathy for the victims and a cool, unflappable style that assured Americans far beyond the borders of New York city.

That’s because, for all intents and purposes, Rudy Guiliani was the face of the United States government for those first few hours in the aftermath of the attacks. While the President was being shuttled around by the Secret Service to secure locations across the country, the calm visage of the New York Mayor appearing on television before the press or walking the devastated streets of his beloved city was the only connection the American people watching at home had with someone in charge.

This part of the narrative is what Guiliani and his handlers will want the American people to see and remember once the former mayor announces his candidacy for President of the United States. No one can take this away from Guiliani. By any standard, he performed magnificently in his role as the voice of sanity and reason when everything around him seemed insane and unreal.

But there’s more to the story, of course. And beyond what Guiliani did or didn’t do before and after 9/11 is the question regarding the propriety of using the attacks as a launching pad for a Presidential campaign. Would Guiliani, a high profile mayor of the second largest city in the country, even be considered presidential material if not for his actions on that awful day?

And what about Rudy’s actions in the years prior to 9/11 that some say contributed mightily to the death toll in the towers that day? The antiquated New York emergency services communications system shattered under the city-wide disaster - some say as a consequence of the mayor’s inattentiveness and shortsightedness.

There are also questions swirling around the mayor’s decisions in those first critical minutes after the planes hit the towers. Arriving near the scene of the tragedy, Guiliani, (some believe while using 20/20 hindsight) should have worked harder to establish better coordination of all the first responders. The lack of a unified command structure between police and firefighters at the scene may have contributed to the high death toll say critics.

The 9/11 Commission, cognizant of the political ramifications of being too hard on Guiliani (and the New York authorities in general) ended up glossing over this “two post” command structure where the firefighters and police had separate command centers on scene. But the questions remain. And herein lies Guiliani’s dilemma.

If Rudy makes his 9/11 narrative the centerpiece of his campaign, he opens the door to the kind of scrutiny of his actions that day which will almost certainly tarnish that legend. Questions he has been successfully able to fend off for 6 years will now demand answers. Why were firefighter radios inoperative in the chaos? Why was the emergency service command post set up at the World Trade Centers? Why were there no protocols for responding to a high rise fire or terrorist attack?

These questions were asked in a book by two liberal New York writers for the Village Voice in Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. Dan Collins and Wayne Barrett, using information from several authorities including the 9/11 Commission, detail nearly a decade of inattention to the threat of a terrorist attack by the Guiliani administration as well as some disturbing actions following that tragic day regarding the safety of workers tasked with cleaning up at Ground Zero. A spokesman for the Mayor countered that more than 25,000 people were evacuated safely on 9/11 due in no small part to Rudy’s leadership.

What, if anything, can Rudy do to both frame his candidacy using 9/11 as a backdrop while avoiding the pitfalls that the inevitable increased scrutiny of his actions would engender?

Apparently, Rudy is going to try and maximize his 9/11 personae to the fullest, even going so far as to recruit families of 9/11 victims as supporters:

Supporters of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani have started discussions with relatives of 9/11 victims about backing him if he runs for president in 2008, some family members told The Post.

The conversations have taken place in recent weeks, according to some victims’ families, who described the talks as “casual.”

Marian Fontana, who lost her firefighter husband on 9/11, said she got an invitation to go to a Giuliani exploratory committee dinner last week from a former firefighter working with Giuliani’s committee. She described the invite as “last-minute.”

Fontana said she was appreciative of what Giuliani did after 9/11, but would want to know a lot more about any candidate’s stand on a variety of issues.

I see nothing inherently wrong with this strategy. Especially since the opposition is already lining up to savage him on the issue:

But some relatives who are anti-Giuliani are already planning “Swiftboat”-type attacks against the ex-mayor - modeled on the negative campaign against John Kerry in 2004 by his fellow Vietnam vets. It seems likely that 9/11 kin could help Giuliani counter that criticism.

Some 9/11 family members have been deeply critical of Giuliani, blaming him for communications failures the day of the attacks.

Others have faulted his administration for allegedly not doing enough to protect rescue and recovery workers from polluted air at Ground Zero.

And it is a dead certainty that the 9/11 “Truthers” - the paranoid nutcases who posit all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding that terrible day - will be out in full force, piggybacking their crackpot ideas on the opposition to Guiliani wherever and whenever they get a chance. This may actually play into Guiliani’s hands in that the Truthers may discredit some of the opposition to his candidacy.

But the press will almost certainly be relentless in their pursuit of Guiliani - especially in the matter of the post-9/11 health issues of workers at Ground Zero. The question of adequate safeguards for those workers and the subsequent rash of respiratory ailments and deaths was even highlighted by President Bush in his State of the Union Speech. Did Guiliani sacrifice workers’ health in the interest of getting the site cleaned up? This question and others will dog his campaign unless he is willing to address the issues frontally.

And this is something he may be unwilling to do. Rudy will be walking an extremely fine line between exploiting 9/11 and downplaying his role in that day’s drama. Americans don’t like braggarts for president so Guiliani will probably have others touting his positive contributions in the disaster. It is ironic however, that he himself will probably have to deal directly with the criticisms, answering questions early on in order to tamp down any possibility that the criticisms will get in the way of his message. Whether he can use this platform to sharpen his message regarding his leadership and competence as well as his toughness and willingness to make big decisions remains to be seen.

He will also have to deal with the perception that using 9/11 as a catalyst for his campaign may be taken as unseemly. If he goes too far, his opponents will let him have it. If he doesn’t go far enough, he risks having the narrative disappear from the campaign altogether.

The press as referee will collectively decide what is appropriate and what isn’t. Given their penchant for creating controversy and knocking down frontrunners, it wouldn’t surprise me if the attacks on Guiliani’s 9/11 legend started immediately following any formal announcement of his candidacy. As we are seeing with Senator Obama, once you throw your hat in the ring, it’s open season and may the devil take the last reporter who jumps off the bandwagon.

Fair or not, ready or not, Guiliani will be dealing with these issues in the coming weeks. How he responds will not only determine whether he can become President but also what kind of a President he might end up being.

Can a pro-choice candidate win through and capture the GOP nomination for President?

Conventional wisdom would seem to mitigate against it. For more than a quarter of a century, the pro-life lobby has been the most consistent and reliable of GOP interest groups. Their ranks have fleshed out GOP presidential campaigns with volunteers and fundraisers. And it is no exaggeration to say that their advocacy contributed mightily to GOP victories in the House and Senate during the decade and a half of GOP control of Congress.

The pro life lobby has also shown that it has muscle at the state level, passing laws in numerous legislatures regarding parental consent, strictures against late term abortions, and something known as “informed consent” where the woman is told about the development of her fetus before the procedure.

But with the Republican party in turmoil and conservatives re-examining everything about themselves, it might just be possible for a nominal pro-choice candidate like Rudy Guiliani to squeak through and capture the nomination.

This is because his main pro-life rival John McCain has his own problems with conservatives despite his near perfect opposition to abortion. If Rudy could capture the bulk of conservatives who don’t assign as much weight to pro life issues as some others (and if Rudy can avoid a few other landmines on guns, affirmative action, and questions regarding his personal life), I think he has a decent chance of winning.

I characterized Guiliani’s pro-choice stance as “nominal” above. In fact, his views are very close to the mainstream of the country which, in the end, is pro-choice but supports most of the restrictions placed on the procedure at the state level. And the out of control, rabid positions of pro choicers with regards to partial birth abortions as well as their curious reluctance to acknowledge that neo-natal science has progressed since Roe v. Wade in 1973 makes Rudy’s views much more mainstream than say, Hillary Clinton who supported a “mental health” exception in a partial birth abortion bill in 2003.

That amendment failed to lower the bar for “viability of the fetus outside the womb” below 24 weeks - a totally unscientific and arbitrary time period given the fact that 21 week old fetuses routinely are delivered and survive.

But “mainstream” views on abortion are different than those held by pro lifers. And as this NR piece points out, if Rudy can make it through the primaries, he can probably expect the support of the pro life crowd in November, 2008:

In many cases over the years, pro-lifers have been willing to overlook politicians’ pasts and embrace their conversions. It is never too late to begin protecting life. In other cases, pro-lifers have reached a modus vivendi with politicians who continue to disagree with them. The late Sen. Paul Coverdell, for example, supported legal abortion. But once he won his primary, pro-lifers supported him since he promised to vote to ban partial-birth abortion, oppose public funding of abortion, and support conservative nominees to the judiciary. He lived up to those promises. He stayed theoretically pro-choice, but was operationally pro-life. The bar for Giuliani will be higher, since he is running for president — and so far he has done less.

He has moved on partial-birth abortion. On Meet the Press in 2000, he said he would “vote to preserve the option for women.” He also said, “I think the better thing for America to do is to leave that choice to the woman, because it affects her probably more than anyone else.” Partial-birth abortion is inches away from infanticide, and more than 60 percent of Americans — including many people who consider themselves “pro-choice” — think it is abhorrent and should be prohibited.

Giuliani has now joined this consensus, which is the bare minimum a presidential candidate who wants to find common ground with pro-lifers must do. On Hannity & Colmes on Monday night, Giuliani said that he supports a ban on partial-birth abortion, so long as it allows the procedure when necessary to save the mother’s life. The qualification is puzzling: Nobody has ever presented a persuasive hypothetical case in which a woman’s health would depend on partly delivering her child and then crushing the child’s skull and sucking out the brains — let alone an actual case in which her life was at stake. But we applaud the mayor’s newfound willingness to endorse a ban at all.

But the primaries is where the power of the pro life lobby is most keenly felt. And from what I’ve read from some of the leading lights of that group, they are by no means taken with the candidacy of John McCain. Aside from McCain’s other problems with conservatives on judges and campaign finance reform, the Senator has actually muddied the waters a bit with regards to his pro-life stance, calling legalized abortion “necessary” at one point while saying he would not be in favor of repealing Roe v. Wade:

McCain said, “I’d love to see a point where Roe vs. Wade is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.” A spokesman said that McCain “has a 17-year voting record of supporting efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade. He does that currently, and will continue to do that as president.”

This may cause the pro life lobby to either turn to another candidate - someone like Sam Brownback or Duncan Hunter - or perhaps even split their support several ways. This would help Rudy even more in the primaries as he and McCain slug it out.

I frankly think Rudy’s biggest problem will be a limited appeal in the south. He will be competitive in Florida and Texas but I think McCain has a real chance to shut him out elsewhere, racking up large majorities in the old cotton south as well as most of the border states. Perhaps that perception will change but if you think about it you’ll see what I mean: The last northeastern candidate from either party to win the Presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960. And the last northeastern candidate to win the Republican nomination was Tom Dewey in 1948.