I won’t have Rudy Giuliani to kick around anymore
I know I’ve picked on Rudy Giuliani during his presidential campaign, and it seems a bit cruel to dogpile on him after he finished a distant third in his make-or-break state. That said, after reading Michael Powell and Michael Cooper’s dissection of the Giuliani campaign in the New York Times, I do have one final ...
I know I've picked on Rudy Giuliani during his presidential campaign, and it seems a bit cruel to dogpile on him after he finished a distant third in his make-or-break state. That said, after reading Michael Powell and Michael Cooper's dissection of the Giuliani campaign in the New York Times, I do have one final thought. Consider this passage: Mr. Giuliani?s campaign was stumbling, even if it was not immediately evident. He leaned on friendly executives who would let him speak to employees in company cafeterias. Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain, by contrast, compiled lists of undecided Republican voters and invited them ? sometimes weeks in advance ? to town-hall-style meetings. ?Rudy Giuliani had a tremendous opportunity in New Hampshire that his campaign never embraced,? said Fergus Cullen, the state Republican chairman. ?They vacillated between being half committed and three-quarters committed, and that doesn?t work up here.? Mr. Giuliani also relied on a New York-style approach to photo-friendly crowds. ?Rudy went very heavy on Potemkin Village stops, working what I call ?hostage audiences,? ? Mr. Cullen said. ?It looked like he was campaigning, but he didn?t know who he was talking to.?.... In the end, Mr. Giuliani and his advisers treated supporters as if they were so many serried lines of troops. If they tell a pollster in November that they are going to vote for you, this indicates they are forever in your camp, their thinking went. But politics does not march to a military beat; it is a business of shifting loyalties. By Tuesday night, even those voters who rated terrorism as the most important issue were as likely to vote for Mr. Romney or Mr. McCain as for Mr. Giuliani. From the way he organized his campaign, it seems like Giuliani would have been a complete failure at any kind of governance that would have required, you know, politics or legislation or wonky stuff like that.
I know I’ve picked on Rudy Giuliani during his presidential campaign, and it seems a bit cruel to dogpile on him after he finished a distant third in his make-or-break state. That said, after reading Michael Powell and Michael Cooper’s dissection of the Giuliani campaign in the New York Times, I do have one final thought. Consider this passage:
Mr. Giuliani?s campaign was stumbling, even if it was not immediately evident. He leaned on friendly executives who would let him speak to employees in company cafeterias. Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain, by contrast, compiled lists of undecided Republican voters and invited them ? sometimes weeks in advance ? to town-hall-style meetings. ?Rudy Giuliani had a tremendous opportunity in New Hampshire that his campaign never embraced,? said Fergus Cullen, the state Republican chairman. ?They vacillated between being half committed and three-quarters committed, and that doesn?t work up here.? Mr. Giuliani also relied on a New York-style approach to photo-friendly crowds. ?Rudy went very heavy on Potemkin Village stops, working what I call ?hostage audiences,? ? Mr. Cullen said. ?It looked like he was campaigning, but he didn?t know who he was talking to.?…. In the end, Mr. Giuliani and his advisers treated supporters as if they were so many serried lines of troops. If they tell a pollster in November that they are going to vote for you, this indicates they are forever in your camp, their thinking went. But politics does not march to a military beat; it is a business of shifting loyalties. By Tuesday night, even those voters who rated terrorism as the most important issue were as likely to vote for Mr. Romney or Mr. McCain as for Mr. Giuliani.
From the way he organized his campaign, it seems like Giuliani would have been a complete failure at any kind of governance that would have required, you know, politics or legislation or wonky stuff like that.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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