DeWayne Wickham
Like another one-time New York mayor whose presidential ambitions were plagued by allegations of personal failings, Rudolph Giuliani hopes his record of public service will be enough to hoist him into the White House.
Last month, he created an exploratory committee to probe his chances of winning the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. That’s not going to be an easy task, if a recent Newsweek poll is any indication.
The hurdle between Giuliani and the Oval Office is his tumultuous personal life. His first marriage, to a cousin, ended with an annulment after 14 years. His second marriage lasted 18 years and ended in divorce in 2002. That stormy breakup played out like a real-life sequel to the 1989 movie, “The War of the Roses.”
As her marriage to Giuliani fell apart, second wife Donna Hanover sought a court order to keep New York’s then-mayor from bringing his girlfriend into the official mayoral residence. Giuliani responded by stripping Hanover of her official duties as the city’s first lady. Giuliani and the alleged “other woman,” Judith Nathan, married the following year.
Presumably, Giuliani’s exploratory committee will assess just how much damage this sordid marital history would do to the presidential hopes of a man dubbed “America’s Mayor” after his high-profile leadership of New York City’s response to the 9/11 attacks. That damage could be considerable, given the great influence the religious right has in GOP primaries.
But if he can get GOP voters — especially those in the Bible Belt — to forgive his personal missteps and focus on his public service, Giuliani actually might transform the Republican Party.
His moderate brand of politics — he’s liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal and defense issues — could help stop the GOP from becoming the political instrument of those who would turn this nation into a theocracy.
Most of the Republican Party’s traditional ideals (small government, free markets, individual rights) have been plowed under by GOP leaders and activists committed more to the exercise of power than to the party’s traditional core beliefs.
Somewhere between the views of the party’s Nelson Rockefeller wing and its evangelical brigade is a GOP that can help erase this nation’s red-state-blue-state divide and — if he unleashes it — give Rudolph Giuliani a good chance of following in the footsteps of Grover Cleveland.
Write Wickham at DeWayneWickham@aol.com.
