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Rudymania
Andrew McCarthy, writing at the New English Review, is all-out for Giuliani for president. I mean, he describes the guy in salvific terms. I don’t get it. I think conservatives are so desperate (and I’m not using that word in its usual contemporary sense as a put-down, I mean that people are legitimately desperate) for leaders with guts, that they notice Giuliani’s record of guts, they go wild about that, and they block out everything else about him that makes him wildly unsuited for the presidency.
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N. writes:
I agree that there is desperation in the Republican party for someone who can stand up to a likely Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama ticket.
Giuliani talks tough, and did a good job as Mayor after 9/11, so he seems like a good choice. There really aren’t any other candidates who have anything like a track record of tough action, as opposed to tough talk, as an executive. McCain’s wartime experience is not really the equivalent. But Giuliani is just not electable off of the coasts, especially after the last 8 years. A lot of people kind of held their nose in 2004 as they voted for GW Bush, and are both weary and wary of “taking another one for the team”.
Maybe that will change in the next year and a half, as the specter of a second Clinton White House begins to sink in.
Part of the problem with Andy McCarthy, I think, is that he is an urban northeasterner. He just doesn’t know anyone who is personally offended by such flaws in Giuliani as:
- His lousy and despicable record towards two of his multiple wives
- His disgusting habit of willingly participating in “Gay pride” parades and other events
- His ridiculous attitude towards gun control
- His open-border position
Therefore, Mr. McCarthy can convince himself that these huge negatives can somehow be overcome, perhaps via focus groups, clever speeches and so forth. I am confident, based on people I know who live away from the coasts, that a Giuliani nomination would almost certainly lead to a serious third party challenge from the right. Thus, Giuliani would lead to a Democrat victory, although I’m sure that his supporters would blame the third party candidate much as backers of Bush 41 blamed (and still blame) Ross Perot for Bill Clinton’s victory.
But this kind of thinking isn’t that of a rational, careful, prudent person. It is a kind of magical-thinking, along the lines of “This guy, he’ll be all right, if we all just wish hard enough,” but it won’t.
Andrew McCarthy writes:
Surprising that you and the reader who has reacted overlook that I actually worked for Giuliani for several years after he hired me at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. My perception of him is not based on hope, intuition, or conscious avoidance. It is based on experience and observation, as well as a sense of what the major threat to our country is and of the comparative aptitude of those in the running to deal with that threat.
As for the aloof urban northeasterner drivel, I happen to have been raised in a strict Roman Catholic family of sparse means in The Bronx, and put myself through school (including night law school) by working all sorts of jobs, side-by-side with people from all walks of life. I am quite familiar with cultural and doctrinal Christian sensibilities; I’m thus equally familiar with love, forgiveness, redemption, and letting him who is without sin cast the first stone.
In any event, I would support Rudy regardless of whether Sen. Clinton were the likely Democratic nominee. I know him. I am convinced he will be a great president.
LA replies:
Andy, thanks for this, which I’ll add to the post. I knew you had been a federal attorney but not that you had worked for Giuliani. But your personal familiarity with him doesn’t change the factors that make people object to him as a presidential candidate.
Michael Jose writes:
In response to your comments on Giuliani, Andrew McCarthy said:
I am quite familiar with cultural and doctrinal Christian sensibilities; I’m thus equally familiar with love, forgiveness, redemption, and letting him who is without sin cast the first stone. Pfft. No one is suggesting that we condemn Giuliani or send him to jail. We are wondering whether or not we should elect him as president. Moreover, for Giuliani to be redeemed or forgiven for his previous behavior would require some acknowledgement on his part that he was wrong. Otherwise, what we are talking about isn’t forgiveness or redemption, but excusing sin.
Moreover, the question isn’t simply Giuliani’s personal life and his beliefs in terms of what kind of man they make him. The question is what type of policies he would enact.
McCarthy obviously doesn’t really care about social conservatism if he deigns to support Giuliani. McCarthy writes:
My perception of him is not based on hope, intuition, or conscious avoidance. It is based on experience and observation, as well as a sense of what the major threat to our country is and of the comparative aptitude of those in the running to deal with that threat.
Maybe his perception is based on the fact that he agrees with Giuliani’s liberal positions on social issues.
LA replies:
I agree with Mr. Jose that Mr. McCarthy’s reference to forgiveness and redemption was not apposite. And what is Mr. McCarthy telling us about his strict Catholic upbringing—that it tells him that grossly immoral behavior by a public official is irrelevant and that we should ignore it? Giuliani carried on a public affair with a female subordinate during his mayoralty. While he was mayor, he had his attorney, Raoul Felder, publicly attack the character of Guiliani’s wife. Giuliani marched annually in a homosexual pride parade that included an organization devoted to child molestation. Does Andy McCarthy have any opinion about these things? Or does he just lump them all under the category of “forgiveness”—a forgiveness for which, as Mr. Jose has pointed out, Giuliani has not asked, since he’s never admitted to doing anything objectionable?
If Mr. McCarthy feels that Giuliani’s talents transcend his flaws, that’s an argument he could make. But, significantly, that’s not what he’s said. Instead, he’s given Giuliani a complete pass on his flaws, telling us that we must do the same. Which leads us to the bottom line here: a Giuliani presidency would mean the end of moral and social conservatism in the Republican party. Because of Giuliani’s own very public amorality, all moral considerations, all discussions about the moral problems in society, would have to come to an end among Republicans (in much the same way that, in order to support G.W. Bush, the Republicans suppressed all criticism of Bush’s liberalism as Bush dragged the GOP to the left). A Giuliani presidency would do to the Republicans and the conservatives what the Clinton presidency did to the Democrats—turn them into a party of moral non-judgmentalism. Does Andrew McCarthy think this would be good for the country?
LA continues:
An article in the Globe and Mail in late 2001, after Giuliani had become a hero of 9/11, tells the basic facts, though there’s much more to it than this:
Just a few months ago, the mayor would not have won many popularity contests. Estranged from his wife, television personality Donna Hanover, he broke the news to her that he was leaving her for another woman—at a news conference.
On Mother’s Day, his celebrity divorce lawyer tried to shame Ms. Hanover into leaving Gracie Mansion, where she was staying with their two children. “She’s howling like a stuck pig,” Raoul Felder said. “I suppose we’re going to have to pry her off the chandelier to get her out of there.”
That’s what Giuliani had his attorney say publicly about the mother of his children, so that Giuliani could remove his wife and his children from their home and he could begin living publicly at Gracie Mansion with his new squeeze, Judith Nathan, now his third wife.
So I ask Andy McCarthy again (he tells me he’s going away for a few days, but maybe he will get this before he leaves): does support for Giuliani as president entail acceptance by the American people of such behavior by their leaders? And if so, then how can decent behavior be expected of anyone?
Howard Sutherland writes:
I can appreciate that Andrew McCarthy is loyal to Rudolph Giuliani, having worked for him at one time. That time, however, was 20 years ago. Giuliani has changed, and so has America – both for the worse. In any event, how involved was Mr. McCarthy in U.S. Attorney Giuliani’s often-abusive prosecutions under the ridiculously overbroad RICO statutes, including prosecutions of people who on any sane application of law were not criminals? What, in retrospect, does McCarthy think of Giuliani’s record as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York? If you think about it, looking at how Giuliani exercised federal power when he had it, may be more revealing of the kind of president Giuliani would be than his record as New York’s mayor.
As far as I can tell, Mr. McCarthy doesn’t worry much about abusive prosecutions. His most active brief at NRO at the moment is defending à outrance the Bush administration’s outrageous railroading of two Border Patrol agents into prison for doing their jobs. Even though the agents are Mexicans themselves, President Bush has given them no consideration; surprising behavior from the Mexico-besotted Decider. Unsurprisingly, one of the imprisoned agents has already been beaten bloody by other Hispanic inmates, ones who really are criminals, almost certainly with being illegal aliens among their crimes. Nevertheless, relying on lies the federal bureaucrats who told them have since admitted are lies, Mr. McCarthy continues to defend the Giuliani-like U.S. Attorney on the case, Bush crony Johnny Sutton, and vilify the prosecution’s critics. Why isn’t McCarthy interested in what motives the Bush administration might have for pursuing this very strange and counter-intuitive prosecution?
As he admits to Mr. Auster, like Rudolph Giuliani Andrew McCarthy is from New York City. A lot of people from greater NYC who truly think of themselves as conservative are actually more socially liberal than many of the Democrats one finds in more conservative, more American states (or even in New York outside NYC and its suburbs). Tri-state area conservatives tend to be very focused on economics as well as exceptionally susceptible to open-borders messianism – the Holy of Immigrant Holies, Ellis Island, is right there in the harbor next to the Statue of Liberty, after all. With New York liberal/neocon dominance of the media, it’s easy for NYC ‘conservatives’ not to notice that conservative Americans in the rest of the country are well to their right. So it is very likely that, because he is a Noo Yawkah himself, Mr. McCarthy really can’t see that most Americans outside New York City and its suburbs who would consider voting Republican are not going to consider being from New York City a point in Giuliani’s favor. As I have said here before, most Americans find New York City, to put it mildly, more than a little strange. Nowadays, I guess Miami and Los Angeles are fighting New York City for the dubious honor of being the least American city in the United States, but for over a century New York had undisputed claim to that title. A lot of New Yorkers mistook widespread sympathy throughout the country for New York after September 11th for being in love with NYC generally. Not so. Against Hillary Clinton, a nominal New Yorker herself, being from New York will be no help at all. Being from Colorado, however, might… Go Tancredo!
Mr. Sutherland, who is of Southern roots, happens to live in the Northeast himself. I add that just to point out, contrary to the impression he may have created, that he is not simply agin’ this part of the country.
Bruce B. writes:
McCarthy wrote: “as well as a sense of what the major threat to our country is….”
I wish he had been more explicit. I assume he means the GWOT? In enumerating what ails us, he seems to stop at 1. So as long as Islamic terrorism threatens us and the GWOT isn’t won (and as we know, it can’t be won ) we get to be stuck with indecent Clinton-types and/or open-borders nation-crushers so long as they are “tough on terror.”
This is very disappointing. He seems to be the closest thing to a traditionalist at NRO and I feel like he’s worlds apart from VFR. This just enhances my sense that we’re isolated and just talking to ourselves.
To be fair to him, he hasn’t had a chance to respond to your questions yet and I hate to jump to conclusions but…
John D. writes:
Having just read Bruce B’s comments regarding McCarthy he writes:
“This is very disappointing. He seems to be the closest thing to a traditionalist at NRO and I feel like he’s worlds apart from VFR. This just enhances my sense that we’re isolated and just talking to ourselves.”
I’ve had that same thought myself many times regarding today’s “thinkers” or lack thereof. As I search the web for “true” traditionalist conservative sites, I find they are very few in number. For the insufficient amount of those which I do encounter, I always look to their links for additional sites, generally finding few, and seldom find VFR included in those links. As you (in my opinion) are one of the most intuitive traditionalist theorists in today’s climate, I am perplexed as to why this is so. Are we indeed just talking to ourselves? Does anyone still believe in the expansion of conservative thought these days, or is it just plain lethargy that is bringing about philosophy’s current demise? Or could it be that the drug of liberalism has become so entrenched in current thought, that we cannot find it possible to return to the Guiding Principles that will resuscitate us? Undeniably disappointing.
Steve Winwood wrote:
Come down off your throne
and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason
I’ve been waiting so long.
Somebody holds the key.
But I’m near the end and
I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and
I can’t find my way home.
Come down on your own
and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason
I’ve been waiting all these years.
Somebody holds the key.
But I can’t find my way home.
But I can’t find my way home.
Still I can’t find my way home,
And I ain’t done nothing wrong,
But I can’t find my way home.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 16, 2007 08:35 PM | Send
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