A theory about Giuliani

A female correspondent remarks on how dispirited the erstwhile front-running, erstwhile “inevitable,” erstwhile self-glorifying Rudolph Giuliani has seemed over the last couple of months, and she has a theory why. She says the main reason Rudy ran for the presidency was to give his wife—his third wife—the perks, fame, and sense of importance she so evidently craves, as seen in his statement to Barbara Walters that he planned to include his wife, a registered nurse, in Cabinet meetings. So, when the public and the pundits reacted strongly against his wife, against his constant gratuitous references to her in his speeches, against his taking cell phone calls from her in the middle of his speeches, against their extravagant public displays of affection, and told him in no uncertain terms to get her out of their faces, when he found out to his shock that the public wasn’t going to love Judith to pieces as he does but just the opposite, and when he was forced to take her off-stage (she hasn’t been in evidence at his campaign appearances in months), it took the heart out of him. Deprived of the real engine of his presidential candidacy, he’s now just going through the motions.

Update January 13: I would add a further point to this very interesting theory. Giuliani’s motivation in running for president was not just to please his wife, but to get the country to validate his entire relationship with her, and thus to validate the mess of his personal life, his treatment of his second wife, his divorce, his abandonment of his children, everything. Famous for his lack of the capacity for self-criticism, running for president (as I wrote last April) not in order to do things for the country but to affirm his own greatness, Giuliani expected the country to approve his great love affair with his third wife that he was shoving in their faces, along with the extremely unattractive personal history that lay behind it. If the public accepted this package, and in the fullest possible way, by electing him president, then the traditional morality by which Giuliani’s behavior was condemned would be banished, and Guiliani could no longer be judged. So, when the public rejected his constant parading of Judith, the very meaning of his campaign, which was the validation of his bloated and remorseless ego, was destroyed. And that’s why he became depressed.

To put it another way, Giuliani was seeking to eliminate social conservatism from the Republican party, not just through his policies, but through the extravagant display of his personal life.

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James W. writes:

Who is this female correspondent? Is she 35 years of age, and a natural born citizen of the United States? We’re going to need somebody to step up when the convention is deadlocked.

Terry Morris writes:

“Deprived of the real engine of his presidential candidacy, he’s now just going through the motions.”

LOL. One can only hope. There are any number of moderate sized midwestern towns that would love to have Rudy as their mayor, I’m sure. He could buy himself a pickup truck with a bench seat in the cab where his wife or concubine (whoever she may be at any given moment) could teeny-bop around with him on the city streets. And the people would love it; they would think it was “so cute,” especially the women-folk. Perhaps an idea like this might re-inflate the man.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

C’mon. This sort of psychoanalytical character assassination is intellectually ridiculous, not to mention mean-spirited, and wholly ignores the nature of the modern, media-driven political environment. In what ways has Giuliani, the real person and candidate, been acting “dispirited” in recent months? I’ve watched the debates and attended a Giuliani fund raiser. He has not been acting “dispirited.” What your female correspondent actually is referring to is how Giuliani and his campaign are being portrayed by the mainstream media. The same mainstream media that in the days after the Iowa primary were prepared to declare Huckabee and Obama the nominees, and then a few days later, after the New Hampshire primary, were applauding Hillary’s “comeback” and jumping on the McCain bandwagon. Absurd. Giuliani has been following a political strategy, which may turn out to be smart or dumb, to focus on Florida and the states that hold their primaries on Super Tuesday. Just because the mainstream media does not understand this and have decided to write Giuliani’s epitaph—frankly, because they want to sink the most “conservative” choice among the leading Republicans who promises to run the strongest campaign against Hillary or Obama—does not mean that Giuliani himself has been “dispirited.” What nonsense.

LA replies:

Thanks to Mr. Warshawsky for telling others, on the basis of zero evidence, what they are “really” talking about when they talk about Giuliani. I hate to disappoint Mr. W., but both the correspondent and I were referring to Giuliani’s actual demeanor at public events and speeches, just as we said.

As for the notion that it is impermissible to discuss and probe a politicians’ thought processes and motives, the fact is that Giuliani himself keeps bringing his personal life into his public life in the most stunningly inappropriate ways, such as announcing that he’s going to include his wife, a registered nurse, in cabinet meetings. Yet somehow, according to Mr. W., it is unfair and illegitimate for people to speak about the behavior and to wonder why this man is behaving as he does. On numerous occasions Giuliani has interrupted campaign speeches to answer a cell phone call from his wife and proceeded to engage in conversation with her while his audience sat there amazed, but according to Mr. W. this exceedingly strange behavior, and the personal factors that may drive it, are off-limits. As press interviews with Giuliani associates have brought out, Rudy felt he had to pick up every call from his wife no matter where he was or what he was doing, or face her wrath. That Giuliani is so in thrall to the demanding and needy Judith that he puts his public responsibilities and even minimally acceptable social conduct second to her demands, and also that he sees nothing wrong with this extravagant subservience and expresses surprise that people are offended by it, is not only highly relevant to his character and readiness to lead the country; it is prime evidence for the very theory advanced above by my correspondent and me.

As a final note, here is the way the Wall Street Journal discussed Giuliani’s behavior:

Mr. Giuliani has run an impressive campaign so far, especially on the issues. He has a record of accomplishment in New York, and he projects the kind of executive competence that many Americans want in a President. The rap on his candidacy, however, is that his personal history and behavior are simply too strange for someone who wants to sit in the Oval Office. Voters will decide whether that’s true, but if nothing else Mr. Giuliani ought to be aware of this vulnerability and do nothing to compound it.

“That was just weird,” one NRA audience member told the New York Post about the phone interruption. Mr. Giuliani doesn’t need more weird.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 12, 2008 04:30 PM | Send