Rudy's ability to inspire

Stephen Roderick:

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... Along with McCain and Mitt Romney, his best-known fellow Republican presidential contenders, Giuliani is out on the thin, saggy pro-surge limb with the president. But Rudy can spin the issue in a way McCain and Romney, not to mention Hillary and Barack Obama, cannot. And now he does just that: Iraq leads to 9/11, which leads to the sacred image of construction workers raising the flag over ground zero.

“I knew what they were standing on top of,” Giuliani says. “They were standing on top of a cauldron. They were standing on top of fires 2,000 degrees that raged for a hundred days. And they put their lives at risk raising that flag.”

The room is silent. Not a fork hits a plate, not one gold bracelet rattles.

“They put the flag up to say, ‘You can’t beat us, because we’re Americans.’"

The mayor pauses and, as if on cue, an old woman sniffles.

He continues. “And we don’t say this with arrogance or in a militaristic way, but in a spiritual way: Our ideas are better than yours.”

Applause reverberates off the chandeliers. Millionaires pump fists. Dowagers daub eyes. This is what they came to see! Seemingly every law-enforcement officer in Wilmington appears with a camera. Over and over, Giuliani grips and grins.

It may sound preposterous to a Rudy-savvy New Yorker. But in this ballroom full of lock-jawed Wasps, it sounds like presidential salvation.

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Once the rest of the country sees Giuliani up close, the conventional New York wisdom once held, his campaign will surely fold. So far, exactly the opposite has happened. The more Rudy has put himself out there, the higher his numbers have climbed. Last week, a CBS poll showed Giuliani leading McCain by a whopping 21 points while a Quinnipiac survey found Giuliani running five points ahead of Hillary nationally, and dead even in blue states.

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There is much more. Much of it is the typical liberal New Yorker complaints against Rudy. But, the author is honest enough to see what is attractive about his candidacy and why he has a chance. He still does not get how his battles against the liberal establishment in New York also made him a hero to many west of the city limits.