GIULIANI WILL BE AN EASY MAN TO SWIFT BOAT, IF WE CHOOSE TO DO SO, BUT WE PROBABLY WON’T

This administration is probably one of the worst in history.  President Bush, the Younger, chose one of the most evil men in our country to be his Vice President for what may be several reasons.  The first, and most plausible, could be that Dubya just doesn’t have the innate ability to think for himself and needed someone to do the job for him.  That someone just happened to be a person so vile that it brought about the speculation on the second possibility.  Nobody, not even the most right wing right-winger would possibly ever consider Dick Cheney, one of the most polarizing figures known to man, as a viable President.  Therefore, Bush 43 would not be a target for either impeachment or assassination.  Certainly, the tactic has been used in the past.  Many have speculated that Bush 41 chose Dan Quayle as his Veep largely because Quayle was perceived as being a nice guy who didn’t have all that much on the ball.  That being the case, people were scared shitless of the possibility of a Quayle Presidency and made sure that Bush, the Elder, remained safe and sound.

Still, the most recent Bush Presidency has had some wishing for the days of William Henry Harrison, the ninth President of the United States, and the man who holds the record for the shortest presidential term in our history.  At his inauguration, Harrison caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. He had been in office a month when he died on April 4, 1841, the first President to die in office.  There are actually some folks I know who have speculated that our country might have been better off if that same bug had hung around Washington long enough to find its way into Dubya.  But then they realize that we would have been left with The Dick in the driver’s seat, an unattractive possibility, at best.
 
Unlike John Tyler, who was often dubbed, His Accidency, upon becoming the first Vice President to take the helm after a Presidential death, Cheney is not a man prone to compromise.  A Cheney Presidency would have probably led to even more dogmatic policies and national division than we had ever experienced in the past, leading, once again, to the speculation that that is exactly why he was hand chosen by Dubya’s daddy.
 
But time has passed, and the, once popular, Bush Boys have fallen from public grace.  Just a few months ago, President Bush’s approval level dipped below that of Andrew Johnson’s after his impeachment.  Back then; any Democrat could have beaten any Republican in the 2008 race for the White House.  That was the level of damage done to the Republican Party as a result of the direction in which Bush had taken our country.  That was, of course, at a time when there were no declared candidates on either side of the political spectrum, and everything was mere speculation based on hypothesis.
 
But today the world is different.  Today, there is a plethora of declared candidates running, some highly qualified and others with big question marks after their names.  As in every race of this type, the cream does tend to rise to the top, and in this contest, the Republican cream consists of Rudy Giuliani and John McCain and the Democratic cream contains Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barak Obama.  Yeah, there are others, but the reality of the situation is that on January 20, 2009, one of those four people will, in all probability, be the next President of the United States.
 
And, therein, lies the problem.

Yesterday, entertainment mogul and heavy hitter political contributor, David Geffen, a former Clinton and now Obama supporter, started attacking Senator Clinton and her husband on the Internet.  Referring specifically to the presidential habit of inviting large contributors to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House, Geffen lambasted the former First Lady and President Clinton.  No mention seems to have been made of the fact that Geffen was, in fact, one of those who often availed himself of that hospitality.  No, for some reason, that just didn’t seem to come up.

And on that very same day, a new poll revealed that if the election were to be held today, former New York Mayor Giuliani would win over any potential Democratic rival.

Yep, the Bush guys have possibly taken this country to its lowest point ever, and, yet, here we are with a Republican leading the pack of potential Presidential candidates.  How could that possibly happen?

It could happen because we continue to follow the path of least resistance in our party.  We allow anyone with a pulse and the most minor of political credentials to declare themselves a credible Democratic candidate for the White House.  We continue to act as if it is a good thing to have a multiplicity of candidates when we should be rallying around only one or two candidates who could really win the election.  And, we continue to have pissing contests among ourselves that, in the end, make the electorate question the sincerity of the group hugs that inevitably occur after we have finally united behind a candidate.

In the not too distant past, I have speculated upon the possibility of a Giuliani candidacy.  I see America’s Mayor as being far more vulnerable than others who are not from New York might think.  He will be an easy man to Swift Boat, if we choose to do so, but we probably won’t.

The problem is that we probably don’t have the cajones to dredge up the film of Giuliani leading an NYPD rally against then Mayor David Dinkins, a rally at which the cops kept calling Dinkins the “N” word while been egged on by Rudy.  We don’t have the intestinal fortitude to go forward and explain that Rudolph Giuliani is a man who married his own cousin, and then had the marriage annulled when he met his second wife, cheated on his second wife with at least two separate mistresses while he was still married, going so far as to move one of those women into Gracie Mansion while his wife and children were still living there and, then divorced his second wife to marry his latest girl friend.  We will never point out that Giuliani was as much responsible for the death of Amadou Diallo as the cops, because it was he that armed those inexperienced cops with 9mm semi automatic Rugers that fired ten bullets every time the trigger was pulled.  These are the things we could be saying about Giuliani, but, instead, we have our largest contributors complaining about who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton Administration.

Memo to Howard Dean:

Take control.  Get these guys to realize that this is no longer an ego game.  We don’t need or want these political dwarves to be able to add “Presidential Candidate” to their resumes.  We need everyone to sit down and determine who will be the most electable candidate for the Presidency and unite behind that person now.  Governor Dean, the time has come for you to be a real leader.  We do not need another Terry McCauliffe to continue our fall as a meaningful political force into oblivion.

We certainly do not need a Giuliani Presidency. 

Not now.

Not ever.

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT