RANDOM THOUGHTS

RUDI GIULIANI


Continuing my fascination with the mayor who would be president, I bring you this interesting story about Rudi Giuliani (via Slate):

As the mayor answered the last of the three questions from reporters, he talked about the root causes of terrorism: "oppressive governments that demagogue and blame and project their problems other places and do nothing to solve the problems of their own people."
"Sounds like the Democrats," shouted a man.
...
"Time out," he said bringing his hands together to make a T. "Time out." The crowd quieted down. "The other thing we have to learn is that we can't get into this partisan bickering. The fact is that Republicans and Democrats have the same objectives. … Democrats are loyal Americans. Republicans are loyal Americans. I think we have better answers, but we have to respect each other."

The naive optimist in me sort of gets all gooey inside when I read stuff like this. Seriously, it is rhetoric like this that could win him more than a few votes from my side of the aisle. The cynic in me, however, knows that ultimately this is all just words. Remember, we're living with a president who infamously claimed to be "Uniter and not a Divider." This was the outsider who was going the change the tone in Washington. As we all now know, he most certainly did change the tone, and the Dems have been playing the role of punching bag ever since.
Taking what was said at face value, the concept of engaging a Republican president with whom the Democratic Party can have policy disagreements while still maintaining a civilized level of discourse is something that is so foreign in this day and age that it just feels ... archaic. And unfortunately, highly unlikely. While Giuliani's statement makes me wistful for better days in the future of national politics the crushing weight of reality obliges me to accept that there is simply no way that Rudi will even make it through the primary. Conservatives voters are far too conditioned at this point to the Democrat = traitor paradigm. As John Dickerson says at the end of the Slate article, "This guy is never getting the nomination." Unhappily, I am forced to agree.