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The trouble with Rudy Giuliani

Ed Pilkington

He has made an astounding start in the polls but faces a difficult year.

THERE ARE moments in the febrile atmosphere of American politics when you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself what date it is. The contestants for the 2008 presidential race are already campaigning with the kind of fury normally associated with the closing stages of an election. Do they know there are still 611 days to go?

One such moment occurred this week when the latest polling intelligence was released. The figures showed that Rudolph Giuliani had pulled ahead of his main rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, by a whopping 23 per cent, and is even well out in front of Democrat Hillary Clintonconfounding those who portray the former Mayor of New York as fundamentally unelectable.

Mr. Giuliani sought to capitalise on this good news on Friday when he addressed the people he most needs to convince to secure the Republican nomination — members of the party's conservative wing, that was holding its annual get-together in Washington. That he was invited to address the meeting at all is a sign of how far his star has risen. Two years ago the Conservative Political Action Conference, as the gathering is called, pointedly rebuffed him.

The simple explanation for his success is his image as the nation's hero of 9/11. The story of what he did on September 11, 2001, is now the stuff of legend. That day, famously, turned him into America's Mayor, earned him an honorary British knighthood, and elicited comparisons from breathless commentators to Winston Churchill. The glow has sustained him ever since.

But the closer he gets to formally announcing his intention to run for the White House, the louder the questions become about his fitness for office.

"Right now he's basking in the glow of his 9/11 image," said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But he faces six months of intense scrutiny in which Republicans are going to become much more familiar with his record."

Mr. Giuliani faces an uphill fight to convince the most active members of the Republican party, the conservatives, and religious Right who traditionally mobilise much of the turnout in the primaries, that he is worthy of their support. Despite this week's polls Mr. Giuliani still has a Catch-22 to overcome. He is undoubtedly hugely popular and may well be the Republicans' best hope of holding on to the White House, partly because he comes across as a moderate. But that will count for nothing unless he can overcome the hostility of the fundamentalist core of his own party and convince them that the hero of 9/11 is no New York liberal.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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