Respect Rudy's Decision
John Guardiano disputes my analysis of Rudy Giuliani’s decision not to run for Senate in 2010.
If people want to attribute Giuliani’s decision to reject running for office in 2010 as being selfish, then so be it. It doesn’t really change things. No political party should put itself in a position in which it has to rely entirely on one person to save it from oblivion. Being in that position speaks more about the party than the candidate. And frankly, now that Giuliani has said publicly that he is not going to run, it is too late to change his mind. If he were to do a one-eighty at this point and say that he is going to run, it would signal confusion and lack of direction. Those aren’t good qualities for a candidate for public office.
One major point that John made that stuck with me was with regard to Hillary Clinton. He’s right about this much: I do in fact think that it was relatively easy for her to win the 2000 Senate race after Giuliani withdrew. With all due respect to Rick Lazio, who was and is a dedicated campaigner and a good man in general, Clinton ran a superior race. She had access to a stellar national fundraising network that her husband and Terry McAuliffe spent years putting together. And sure, the political right didn’t like her, but by 2000 New York State was already well on its way to drifting into the solidly Democratic column, so the carpetbagger issue and the various scandals that she was attached to did not really resonate with a lot of New York voters, particularly in New York City. And politically, whatever direction the Big Apple goes, so goes the state. It wasn’t so much that Clinton was not “deterred” from running as she was determined to win the seat because it was a major stepping stone for her presidential run, which was her ultimate goal from day one. For these reasons, I think comparing her fortitude in running for the Senate to Giuliani’s refusal to run is comparing apples to oranges.