Rudy's lawyer friend
Rudy Giuliani doesn't always follow Ted Olson's advice. "I remember conversations with Rudy before he became mayor when he was thinking about running," Mr. Olson says. "I was asking him, 'Why in the world would you want to do this? A, you can't get elected. You're a Republican; it's New York City. And B, there's nothing that can be done about New York City. It's too big; the problems are too deeply engrafted onto the city; the city's in the grip of labor unions, crime, high taxes, heavy burdens. The city's a terrible place, and it's too big to govern.' "There is much more. Olson is an interesting guy that many Democrats hate because he is a good lawyer for cases that Democrats oppose. They dislike Giuliani because he is also effective in supporting issues that Democrats have been wrong on for years. That is why they really fear him as a president. Taranto gets Olson to discuss how Rudy will appeal to social conservatives. Hint: judicial appointments consistent with Bush's are the key, he believes.Just as Mr. Olson was sure Mr. Giuliani couldn't get elected in New York because of his party, it has been a common assumption that the former mayor cannot win the Republican presidential nomination because of his liberal positions on social issues, particularly abortion and guns. Mr. Olson is one of the nation's top conservative lawyers, having represented President-elect Bush in Bush v. Gore and served as Mr. Bush's solicitor general. As chairman of Mr. Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee, he intends to help the candidate defy conventional wisdom again.
...
The war on terror--or, as Mr. Giuliani has called it, "the terrorists' war on us"--has been pivotal in the lives of both Mr. Olson and Mr. Giuliani. The attacks of 9/11 took a grievous personal toll on Mr. Olson. His wife, Barbara, a conservative pundit, had planned to fly to Los Angeles for a television appearance on the eve of his 61st birthday (he was born Sept. 11, 1940). She postponed her trip so she could have breakfast with him on his special day. As a result, she was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when hijackers crashed it into the Pentagon.
...If 9/11 was personally devastating for Mr. Olson, it was politically transformative for Mr. Giuliani. The mayor's calm in the face of catastrophe made him a national hero. As Time magazine put it in proclaiming him Person of the Year, "When the day of infamy came, Giuliani seized it as if he had been waiting for it all his life, taking on half a dozen critical roles and performing each masterfully."
Mr. Olson echoes the sentiment: "You can't prepare as a leader for something like that. You don't know what you're going to do. You don't know what you're going to be made of. His instincts were the kind of instincts that we need in a leader. He went to where the problem was. He understood what the people needed in terms of compassion, in terms of stability, in terms of determination, in terms of inspiration. 'We will fight back. We are New Yorkers. We will not be defeated. We are Americans.' Those are the things people needed to hear."
Thus Mr. Olson's succinct case for President Giuliani: "He knows how to deal with a crisis, a disaster. He knows how to fight terrorism."
...
Taranto leaves out a few inconvenient facts. Giuliani (like Bloomberg) was able to win the race for New York’s mayor because the Democrats conducted a savage primary. They beat up on each other so badly that the eventual nominee was no match for the Republican who was an ex-Democrat (like Bloomberg) and basically a liberal anyway. Taranto is also trying to sell Giuliani to social conservatives on the basis of the kind of judges he might appoint. What’s the evidence for this? What kind of judicial appointments did Giuliani as Mayor? Answer: liberal ones at least according to Heather Mac Donald over at City Journal.
ReplyDelete