Boy oh boy do I hope that Giuliani becomes the Republican nominee in 2008. Why? Because he’s now made it abundantly clear with his rhetoric that he’d be nothing but a younger, crueler and more incompetent version of Dick Cheney. And anyone who’s paid the slightest bit of attention to the polls should know that he’s scraping even further down in the bottom of the barrel than Bush.
I think Democrats would be wise to start pointing out the similarities to Cheney and Giuliani sooner rather than later, as the entrenched myth of Giuliani's competence as an executive officer is much more formidable than that of Cheney as an assessor of intelligence. The myth of Cheney has been adequately demolished by the Iraq war, but Rudy's remains somewhat in tact for a large portion of the politically disengaged. In the most recent issue of The Washington Monthly's Scoop Rachel Morris does a superb job of illuminating these two men's similarities by way of Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine, and by reminding us of Cheney's rhetoric leading up to the 2004 election:
Giuliani’s speech was about as pure an expression of the Dick Cheney worldview as you're likely to find outside the inner recesses of the vice president's psychological bunker.
For instance: “If any Republican is elected president … we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said. Later, he added: “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it.”
This is precisely the logic that Cheney has deployed ever since 9/11, with catastrophic results for the country. In his book, The One-Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind describes a meeting in which Cheney succinctly set out his new doctrine: “If there’s a one-percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response … It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It’s about our response.” In a 2002 speech, Cheney pronounced that, “the risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action.
More than anything, this is what Giuliani must be associated with than--much more so than his cross-dressing or his so-called liberal views. It will do more to remind the American people that a Giuliani administration would in essence be more four more years of Dick Cheney running the show. This recent American Prospect article does an excellent job of looking past these superficial and semi-sensational aspects of Giuliani's campaign and reminding us what a sadistic prick the man has been and will continue to be.