Last week I appeared on MSNBC to discuss political humor. Apparently I was supposed to analyze campaign bloopers instead of making jokes. The segment turned into something of a train wreck. (At least I looked terrific!)

By the way, the second McCain joke was unplanned, uncalled for and I actually feel bad about it. Seriously, I've lost sleep. Senator John McCain is an American hero and I am a sissy, spoiled bitch who deserves to get his ass kicked. Please, sir, punch me in the face -- it would be an honor.

Slate recently pointed out that Senator Hillary Clinton has some things in common with Tracy Flick, the protagonist of Election. But who do the other '08 candidates remind us of?

RUDY GIULIANI is Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit: a balding, bespectacled man who worked in law enforcement in the ‘80s, inspired fear in millions, and surrounded himself with weasels.

BARACK OBAMA is Peter Pan: Rival campaigns claim that Obama’s high-minded promises of “hope” and “change” instill “false hopes” in voters, but the youthful senator is not afraid to think “wonderful thoughts,” and hope that his campaign takes flight just like the hero of this "fairy tale."

MITT ROMNEY is Gordon Gekko from Wall Street: Eager to show off his business experience as global stock markets continue to plummet, the former CEO is touting his management background and extolling his personal fortune. He will also say anything to win. “Greed is good”? What do the focus groups say?



JOHN MCCAIN is Popeye: McCain spent last summer headed for disaster: He flopped in the polls, lacked in donations, and was widely considered a sad, beaten old man. But the grizzled Navy vet has enjoyed a boost of last-minute strength: Victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. If a single phrase sums up McCain, whether you like him or not, it’s “I am what I am." (This comparison has been noted elsewhere).



JOHN EDWARDS is Atticus Finch: Those legal chops. That southern voice. The strident progressive outlook. The hair. Why, it's none other than the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird. Isn't he lovely?



RON PAUL is Dale Gribble from King of the Hill. As a gun-loving libertarian with a Texan accent, Paul has quite a bit in common with this fictional redneck. Heck, Gribble is a hysterical conspiracy nut, and a good number of Paul supporters are 9/11 Truthers.




MIKE HUCKABEE is Dewey Cox from Walk Hard : With his rock star aspirations, friendly blank stare and deep southern drawl, the former Arkansas governor reminds us of this Alabama golden boy.

DENNIS KUCINICH is Rick Moranis: Kucinich has much in common with the Rick Moranis character from the 1993 music video “Tomorrow’s Girls.” They are both perceived as geeks, they both score with women who are out of their leagues, and both have spotted a UFO. The resemblance is out of this world.

Giuliani: He's having a bad day. The editorial writers at the Times, who endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain today, took the opportunity to kick former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani when he's down:

"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 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."

We can only imagine that Giuliani's response would be along the lines of: "9/11. 9/11, 9/11. 9/11; 9/11; 9/11 -- 9/11? 9/11!!!!!"

From the Tampa Tribune undorsement of Rudy Giuliani:

In a conversation with this editorial board, he said the way to end terrorism is: "You get rid of the nation states that support it," opening the door to a host of possibilities.

That's Rudy Giuliani of New York, running for the Cthulu Party presidential nomination --- because why vote for a lesser evil?

It seems that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani can’t go five seconds without invoking 9/11, but his defeat in the Iowa primaries brought a new low: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times I was worried,” Giuliani said.

You would think that America’s Mayor® is taking advantage of 3,000 American dead, but after spending a full (imaginary but revealing) 24 hours with the Republican candidate, it turns out that he is just really, really obsessed…

After chopping onions for dinner: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times I cried.”

After popping Tums for acid reflux: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times my heart ached”

After getting a paper cut from reading the New York Post: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times when I couldn’t fathom the bloodshed.”

After promising to hit the gym and then watching TV instead: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times I wanted to run… or at least walk briskly for double the time.”

After trimming his pubes and nicking his skin: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there was a close shave.”

After slipping under the covers at bedtime and mistaking a bedpost’s shadow for the boogeyman: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times I was scared of dark people.”

After experiencing erectile dysfunction while attempting to seduce his third wife: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there was some seriously explosive penetration.”

After Facebook went down for routine maintenance: “None of this worries me—Sept. 11, there were times I wanted to update my profile… and Christ, did that ever work.”

Since so much of a presidential election, especially its primary phase, consists largely in bickering over low-substance, conceptually confused disputes like which candidate is the true "change-agent" (or on the Republican side, who's a "consistent conservative"), it's difficult to get a sound intuitive hook onto what sort of president a particular candidate would make simply by looking at the foreground of his or her campaign. A much better procedure, surely, is to look at the policy team each candidate has assembled --- one doesn't, for example, choose a foreign policy advisor without both knowing and concurring with the prospective advisor's view.

So one of the biggest reasons I'm supporting Obama is that he hired Samantha Power as a consultant on foreign affairs and picked Austin Goolsbee to head his economic policy shop. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, won the Pollack-O'Hanlon primary. Also, anybody who would pay Mark Penn for anything other than donating his ample adipose deposits for industrial uses is highly suspect.

Likewise, a decent prima facie indicator that Rudy Giuliani's feral foreign policy pronouncements are more than just tactical positioning, and reflect his real beliefs, is that he's taking advice from Stormin' Norman Podhoretz. Helpfully confirming the fact that Giuliani is a dangerous loon, his chief foreign policy advisor, Charles Hill, is unveiling the Giuliani four-point plan for permanent war as an end in itself. (N.B.: Giuliani is not focusing exclusively on what he calls "the terrorists' war on us," pace Eli Lake. He is focusing exclusively on what he calls "The Terrorists' War on Us.")

Charles Hill is a former George Schultz advisor whose most significant contribution to statecraft was some minor obstruction of justice in the Iran-Contra investigations. (Hence the unintentional irony in the title of the execrable, hero-worshipping Hill biography, The Man on Whom Nothing was Lost, written by a cultish former student of his.) Despite a complete dearth of scholarly accomplishments, Hill has a sinecure at Yale as its Diplomat-in-Residence, from which perch he wags his tongue at Paul Kennedy on the need to consult Dante in crafting 21st century foreign policy, and (to pick another debate I was witness to) lectures Seyla Benhabib on the timeline of a middle Eastern history that exists only in his head.

So there you have it: If you're looking for a candidate who will commit actual military resources to an open-ended war on abstractions, count nouns, and literary tropes, Rudy's your man. Who wants to sign up to be a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms of one?

The announcement that Pat Roberston had decided to throw his God-fearing weight behind Rudy Giuliani should come as no surprise to anyone who's followed the trajectory of America's Mayor since he abandoned his Churchillian stature in order to run for president. Giuliani learned the hard way that his social liberalism doesn't wash with the Christian right -- he recently came in second to last at the Values Voter Summit straw poll of Republican candidates (Mitt Romney was the favorite).

What better way, then, for the hero of 9/11 to split this difference than by snuggling up to the man who blamed secularism and abortion for that horrific day?

“I believe in God, I pray to God, pray to Jesus for guidance and for help,” Mr. Giuliani said. “I have very, very strong views on religion that come about from having wanted to be a priest when I was younger and having studied theology for four years in college, it’s an area that I know really, really well academically. I understand the history of religion. Man and women’s relationship to God is one of the strongest, if not the strongest motivating thing in human history.”

And Mr. Giuliani had appealed directly to Mr. Robertson for support, and gave a speech at the university he founded, Regent University, over the summer.

Yes, Virginia, endorsements do matter, particularly when they're sought after and when the endorser stands for everything the candidate knows to be abominable. Compare Giuliani's reticence on Robertson's 9/11 views to his outspokenness on Ron Paul's tepid but dim remarks. If only he had Pat to debate!

Jonathan Chait picks up on Rudy's laissez-faire economics:

Giuliani... is not indifferent to the plight of the uninsured. He actually seems to revel in it:

 

I don't like mandating health care. I don't like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country--the free market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We've got to let people make choices. We've got to let them take the risk--do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because, ultimately, if they don't, well, then, they may not be taken care of.

Where does this bizarrely punitive view of the health care system come from? It apparently arises from Giuliani's experience with welfare reform, which he constantly likens to health care. "You don't start off by promising you're going to insure everybody," he warned earlier this year. "It's the same mistake the Democrats made with welfare." So providing health coverage to the uninsured will make them irresponsible.

[...]

Giuliani also thinks that insulating people from the costs of sickness or injury will make them more likely to get sick or injured. "There is no incentive to wellness," he complains. 

Very true. Not only can't we help those who can't help themselves, but they just want to get the fucker over with already and die of some wasting disease.

I knew something was absent from Rachel Morris' excellent exposure of the trespasses and constitutional encroachments of the Giuliani mayoralty. Now I know what it was. It was Rudy's political philosophy. John Judis at TNR goes farther back into the biography to cull this telling episode:

Of course, Giuliani made his career as a prosecutor rather than a philosopher, and there are certainly Catholic teachings he has repudiated or ignored. In 1989, wanting the New York Liberal Party's endorsement for his GOP mayoral bid, Giuliani renounced his past opposition to abortion and Roe v. Wade. But his exposure to Catholic and classical political thought clearly had a lasting impact on him. At a forum on crime in March 1994, sponsored by the New York Post, Giuliani voiced views on liberty and authority that seemed to flow from these teachings. He criticized liberals for seeing only "the oppressive side of authority." "What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be," he said. "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." Asked in the question period to explain what he meant, Giuliani said, "Authority protects freedom. Freedom can become anarchy." Norman Siegel, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said afterward that he was "floored" by Giuliani's definition of liberty and authority. But anyone who studied philosophy at a Catholic college would not have been surprised by Giuliani's words.

Nor would Mark Lilla be, as his well-received new book, The Stillborn God, defines American exceptionalism -- or why our democracy is so different from European or Asian democracies -- as a "post-Christian phenomenon." It was Thomas Hobbes who first sought to examine revelation from the bottom-up, asking why it is we believe what we do, rather than from the top-down, simply applying assumed revelation to the various levers of state power. Transported to these shores by persecuted Protestant fundamentalists, the bricks and mortar of the wall that separates church and state were easily assembled, ab initio.

Here is Lilla in a fascinating discussion he started at Cato Unbound:

What we seem to have forgotten is how unique the circumstances were that made possible the establishment of the American compact on religion and politics. Perhaps now is the time to restore the much needed concept of American exceptionalism and remind ourselves of some basic facts. The most important one that set our experience apart from that of Europe was the absence of a strong Roman Catholic Church as a redoubt of intellectual and political opposition to the liberal-democratic ideas hatched by the Enlightenment – and thus also, the absence of a radical, atheist Enlightenment convinced that l’infâme must be écrasé. For over two centuries France, Italy, and Spain were rent by what can only be called existential struggles over the legitimacy of Catholic political theology and the revolutionary heritage of 1789. (Though the term “liberalism” is of Spanish coinage, as a political force it was weak in the whole of Catholic Europe until after the Second World War.) Neither side in this epic struggle was remotely interested in “toleration”; they wanted victory.

For a politician like Giuliani, raised (forgive the alliteration) in a tight ethnic and ecumenical enclave, Catholic political theology is still paramount. What accounts for his vaunted liberal tendencies -- his approval of gay marriage, abortion rights, etc. -- is the head-on collision that such theology has had with another breed of exceptionalism: the New York one. The strict law-and-order mayor of the city was also one of its most cosmopolitan mayors. (The man who tried to shut down a museum over a dung-slathered Christ painting also dressed up as Marilyn Monroe.)

Glib talk of Il Duce of Gotham, then, misses the larger point about Giuliani's true character, which was, after all, once attracted to the muscular, theodicy-based liberalism of the Kennedys. The Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban missile crisis, the tensest moments of the Cold War, were really fought between an American Roman Catholic dynasty and the Russian Communist clerisy.

This is why neoconservatism, although pioneered by Jewish ex-radicals, has proved so enticing to political Catholics like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigl. They have recognized in it the germ of a deeply Christian phenomenon -- the Manichean worldview that binds recovering City College Trotskyists and their children to Thomas Aquinas. (Not for nothing did the French philosopher-historian Raymond Aron once term Marxism a "Christian heresy.") In other words, they are the exceptions American exceptionalism.

There's no question that an international purview will only strengthen the core Catholic doctrine in Giuliani. For one thing, the Manichean rumble will now be properly situated between two open faiths, one amenable to Western democracy, and one violently opposed to it.

The popular refrain among progressive alarmists today is, "If you liked Bush, you'll love Giuliani." But this isn't quite right because Giuliani would be staggeringly competent as president, regardless of whether or not you liked the results he produced, or how he set about producing them. Indeed, the "broken windows" theory of crime prevention is, as I've been banging on about for months, the closest analog to what constitutes the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.

So rather it should be said that if you didn't like him as mayor, you'll downright hate Rudy as president.

Over sixty years ago, President Harry Truman gave a speech to Congress, outlining problems with health care in America and proposing solutions. A major problem he noted was “the high cost of individual medical care.” To palliate this, he proposed a national health insurance plan. Although he repeated four times in his speech that was he was proposing was “not socialized medicine,” a vicious campaign, lead mostly by the  American Medical Association, branded the proposal as communist and heralded the death of the proposed reform.

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Rudolph Giuliani was in London yesterday to gladhand a few British political figures and get his photo taken. As a result of 9/11 Rudy has high name recognition outside America, and clearly enjoys his quasi-statesmanlike status whenever he travels abroad. (He even has an honorary knighthood from the Queen, joining a small band of American recipients that include some curious names; Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, J Edgar Hoover and, er, Wesley Clark.)

Rudy touched base with Gordon Brown in Downing Street, but was also careful to meet Conservative leader David Cameron as well. (The Tories’ poll ratings have been pretty stagnant since Brown took over; the meeting was certainly more important for Dave than Rudy.) However, this was pretty much a sideshow to the real order of business; a speech to a think-tank named “Atlantic Bridge” attended – and here’s the point – by Baroness Thatcher.

 Rudy and Maggie

Thatcher is a frail and increasingly reclusive figure these days; having suffered a couple of strokes in recent years, she seldom speaks even when she does appear in public (of which more in a moment). But GOP hopefuls are eager to claim the mantle of the two most successful conservative leaders of modern times – you can barely move round the McCain or Thompson websites without bumping into anecdotes about Ronald Reagan – and, with the Gipper no longer around to confer his blessing on the class of 2008, a photo-op with the Iron Lady is the next-best thing.

But it’s not just Republicans who are happy to be seen with Mrs Thatcher. A couple of weeks ago, Gordon Brown paid tribute to Maggie’s “conviction politics”, and drew an explicit comparison with his own brand of courage and singlemindedness. This drew a wry smile from those of us who remember, albeit distantly, his deep and vocal loathing for what he saw as the failings of the Thatcher ethos (“Poverty does not concern Mrs Thatcher”, as he put it in 1989).

But more surprising was to come. Last week he pulled a rabbit out of his hat; inviting Mrs T to tea at Downing Street, the sight of her standing with him in front of No.10 in a rose-red dress had Tories gaping in disbelief, and not a few of his own party’s base fuming that this most divisive of figures was now considered a suitable guest for a Labour Prime Minister.

If Brown’s coup was carefully and cynically calculated to send out a subliminal message to middle-class voters, that he was a safe pair of hands that could be trusted to secure their prosperity and security in the coming years (let’s hope they don’t read their tax bills too closely), the effect on the Conservatives was that of a cat among the pigeons. The truth is that while a photocall with Mrs Thatcher is de rigueur for right-wing Presidential candidates, and a calculated but worth-it gamble for a left-wing PM, the leaders of the new-look Tories have conspicuously not sought to touch the hem of her robe as Rudy did yesterday.

David Cameron’s mission is to try to get voters to forget the old Conservatives, which for too many conjures up memories of high unemployment, social division and, more latterly, economic mismanagement and sleazy politics (until Blair’s government took that last to a whole new level). Everything he does at the moment seems calculated to enrage the right wing of his own party; one of his first and most frequently-repeated soundbites was to insist that “there is such a thing as society, it’s just not the same thing as the state” – an explicit repudiation of Maggie’s famous statement that there was not, in fact, any such thing.

The Conservatives can’t decide what the lesson of the Thatcher years is; do voters still, deep down, yearn for the certainties of Thatcherite economics and social conservatism, or is the new orthodoxy of high spending and social justice really going to deliver Labour a fourth term? Gordon Brown can cherry-pick from her legacy and use her still-iconic image to reassure his target electorate and sow discord among his enemies. For GOP grandees like Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, Maggie’s blessing is an entirely uncomplicated good; helping to shore up his conservative credentials among those parts of his own party who suspect, rightly, that he’s not - at least on social issues such as guns, gays and abortion - a conservative at all.

The strange truth is it’s only among her own party that her legacy is such a poisoned chalice. Margaret Thatcher haunts the Tories like the ghost of Christmas past; four leaders have been measured against this diminutive old woman since 1990 and all have been found wanting. Cameron may yet be a fifth.

At this rate, we can create a Fantasy United States governed by Al Gore and Fred Thompson: 

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani holds first place in the survey, with support from 27% of the Republicans and independents who said they plan to vote in the party's 2008 primaries.

But Thompson, an actor who played a prosecutor on NBC's "Law & Order," runs just behind, with 21%. Indications are he will join the race within the next month.

Mike Kinsley nails it:

[G]iuliani's story line about standing firm would have been more impressive if it hadn't been accompanied by stories--apparently leaked by his staff--about how they came to settle on this strategy and how clever it is. In the first Republican presidential debate, Giuliani tried to project ambivalence (not a bad place to be on abortion), but it came out as indifference (a bad place to be). He said it was O.K. with him if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and O.K. with him if it didn't. So his campaign decided to go with a "standing firm" narrative instead, as if these were racks of suits from which you could choose the one you thought fit the best. If "standing firm" seems like a clever campaign strategy, then it isn't very clever, is it?

When I ran for N.Y. State Assembly, my argument for being pro-choice was that it wasn't just a matter of a woman's right to choose but also one of a doctor's right to choose. Abortion is, after all, a medical procedure, and most medical procedures are not undertaken lightly or without a fair degree of emotional distress on the part of the patient, no less the physician. This is where politics ends and the doctor-patient relationship begins.

Everyone is, or should be, "personally" opposed to abortion; it's bound to upset your weekend plans, no matter how much you may donate to NARAL or Planned Parenthood. The very thought of flushing out a human fetus -- or surgically removing any part of the human body -- makes us queasy. But this visceral, as it were, reaction has no bearing on the medical or moral justifications for the procedure, especially when it is performed in emergent or life-threatening conditions.

A candidate for president has no business legislating what goes on in the OR. The sooner we realize this as a nation, the better.

Giuliani's pro-choice bona fides were never in question, try though he might to appear red state-friendly as prez material:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani in his campaign appearances this year has stated that he personally abhors abortion, even though he supports keeping a legal right to choose. But records show that in the '90s he contributed money at least six times to Planned Parenthood, one of the country's leading abortion rights groups and its top provider of abortions.

 

Michael Wolff thinks part of Rudy Giuliani's appeal is his batshit insanity:

I argued, having voted for Rudy once, that, in certain contexts, nuttiness—for instance, his need for virtually round-the-clock media attention and affirmation—can be a positive governing approach, as well as an effective public-relations strategy. Rudy's manic domination of the city's airwaves and consciousness during New York's most disturbing crime years, when many people felt the city was beyond anybody's control, was palliative (David Dinkins, his more modest predecessor, always seemed overwhelmed). And, of course, his hysteric nature was part of what enabled him to appear so reassuring on 9/11: When everyone is crazy, he, being actually crazy, is calm. When everyone is stunned, he's expressive. (He may be the best off-the-cuff speaker in politics—conversational, witty, personal.)

Why is it that such a preening mogul slayer like Wolff can't penetrate the outre shell that defines Rudy: it's all about New York. I glimpse the symptoms -- the sub-human narcissism, the eery grace under engulfing fire, the psychotic reaction to peccadillos -- all around me in this city, which is why Giuliani governed it so controversially well.

After 9/11, the prevailing conceit was that Rudy had had his Churchill moment: an ineffectual and not much loved minor politico on the brink of retirement found his world-historical role and forever became, in the popular imagination, a paragon of stoicism and strength. I bought that bill of goods at the time, but now I'm not so sure. Looking back on the low, dishonest decade of the 90's, I don't think anyone else could have been mayor of Gotham. Koch had a demographic reach that spanned from Fairway to Zabar's. Dinkins was a non-entity. And wheeling around to face the current ferret-faced occupant of Gracie Manson, I wonder how it is that a family urinal cake manufacturer in White Plains lost their scion to billions and the managerial revolution of city politics.

Speaking of ferrets, remember this?

It's always worth recapping Giuliani's famous riposte to a ferret owner who called in to the mayor's weekly radio show to protest the city's ban on them as pets: "There is something deranged about you.… The excessive concern you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist.… There is something really, really very sad about you.… This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness.… You should go consult a psychologist.… Your compulsion about—your excessive concern with it is a sign that there is something wrong in your personality.… You have a sickness, and I know it's hard for you to accept that.… You need help."

This is Christopher Walken as His Honor. This is why James Woods played Giuliani on a made-for-TV biopic. This is a New York Post leader maker all year round. Tell me you wouldn't pay real money to have someone like this talk to someone like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Bashar al-Assad.