The former New York Mayor yesterday abandoned his bid to become President of the United States. Just months earlier he was considered a colossus.
His leadership at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks transformed him into a symbol of resolve. He became a contender for the White House the moment the world watched him stand surrounded by debris and dust and tell New Yorkers their city would endure.
But this icon of resilience, a man famed for his aggression, has fought a campaign which was either strategically flawed to the point of absurdity or consciously half-hearted.
His decision to effectively sit-out the first votes in Iowa and New Hampshire stripped his campaign of momentum and established John McCain and Mike Huckabee as credible alternatives to his chief rival, Mitt Romney.
He chose to lump his eggs in one basket – Florida. His resounding failure to win this sun-bleached state killed off any hopes of securing the Republican nomination.
It is odd this man would flounder when seeking votes when his zero tolerance of crime and grime in New York was so incendiary it powered the Lazarus-like rebirth of the city.
It is so odd that you wonder whether it betrays a secret desire not to win the nomination.
There are at least three possible reasons why this might be so:
1. Giuliani was lionised after 9/ 11, but since then he has been demonised with almost as much force. Fellow former mayor Ed Koch entitled his Giuliani biography Nasty Man, and the New York Times this week described him as “a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man”.
If there was a true prospect of him gaining the helm of the superpower everyone who bears a grudge against him would gleefully join the Democrats in attempting to shred his heroic persona.
2. He may have decided that not even a Republican with the looks of George Clooney, the wealth of Bill Gates and the cunning of Machiavelli stands a chance of winning the party of Bush a third term. By spending millions of dollars in Florida he has demonstrated his seriousness about aspiring to the national stage but done nothing to irritate the party elders.
He may well have the fun being the eventual nominee’s running-mate; a good performance would position him nicely to launch a full-blooded campaign against a Democratic president in 2012.
3. A quick glance at headlines promising an economic apocalypse may have convinced him he does not want to become president at the moment when unemployment soars.
And will there ever be a “right time” when it is possible to withdraw from Iraq and declare the mission a categoric victory?
Giuliani’s bizarre campaign is over, but when he puts his feet up tonight he does so as a free man, and liberty tastes at least as sweet as success.
0 comments:
Post a Comment