Rav Casley Gera

The Republican presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, today told his supporters he was abandoning his bid for the White House and backing his long-time friend John McCain. “I spoke with Rudy Giuliani this morning and he confirmed that he is dropping out of the race and will endorse Senator John McCain for president,” the New York senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, said in a statement. -Guardian

This is great! Right? McCain’s in the lead! Great, right? The smug idiot, the guy who took the fun out of New York; the guy who fired the police chief who reduced crime, and took all the credit himself; the guy who slashed firefighters’ funding, then gleefully took all the credit for the heroism of 9/11 (see a pattern here?), falls flat on his face. Great great great. Except, it’s not. For while no-one sane can have wanted him to win, Guliani’s loss has some pretty depressing implications:

1. Conservatives would rather vote for someone who disagrees with all their positions on policy than someone who once lived with gays; and
2. It’s now impossible to win a nomination just by targeting the largest, most-representative states. Far from reducing the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire, the compression of the primary process has increased it and the media focus on Guliani’s “Florida gamble” made it too transparent to pull off.

Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president. The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

- New York Times