Please, Please, Please Giuliani Is Not a Christie Comp

Can we please get this stopped already? Chris Christie's presidential campaign is not at all similar to Rudy Giuliani's disastrous 2008 bid. Not similar. Not comparable. Okay? Just cut it out.

I'm seeing this all over the place, and it's just terrible.

Viable presidential candidates share two characteristics. They have conventional credentials, and they are within the mainstream of their parties in their positions on matters of public policy.

Granted, sometimes it's a bit tricky to judge. Did House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt have "conventional credentials" in 2004? No one from the House has been nominated in the modern era, but Gephardt himself in 1988 and Mo Udall in 1976 came fairly close. What about (General) Wesley Clark in 2004? But basically, we can look at the winners and all the candidates who came close from 1972 on and see if there's anyone similar. The more the comps, and the closer the comps, the better.

On mainstream views, it's hard to judge in any objective way what counts as sufficiently unorthodox to make a candidacy simply not viable. Almost every candidate has at least one issue position which is not embraced by significant groups within the part. And of course what the "party" thinks is, in part, exactly what's happening in the nomination process. Still, it's not impossible for outsiders to conclude that, say, Ron Paul was out of the GOP mainstream during his candidacies, or that Joe Lieberman's Iraq position was both far from the Democratic mainstream and extremely salient during his failed candidacy.

All of which gets back to Christie/Giuliani.

Giuliani failed both tests. One might argue for his credentials...I wouldn't. At least a couple of mayors have run for president before in the modern era, but none came close to winning. Generally, all the winners and almost all of the runners-up have had at least four years of experience at statewide elected office.

Christie, of course, is almost the classic case: elected governor, served a term, re-elected in a landslide.

As far as mainstream of the party: Giuliani easily failed that one. It's not really necessary to go past abortion, although in 2008 Giuliani was also on the wrong side (for Republicans, that is) on gay and lesbian rights when that issue was far more central to the GOP than it probably will be in 2016. There were more, including some where he had made not particularly convincing campaign conversions, but overall it just wasn't a close call.

Christie will have some problems on some issues with some GOP groups. It may be enough to derail his candidacy. But he's far more similar to Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008 than to Giuliani (or, say, Huntsman in 2012). He has problems, sure, but so do the other candidates. In other words, he may lose, but he's surely viable.

The various fiascoes of the Giuliani campaign were either irrelevant to the basic situation, or (as in his slow retreat from "contesting" states) a consequence of that basic situation -- that is, his claim that he was not contesting state after state was actually pretty much spin to cover the fact of losing in state after state. Therefore, they really don't apply to Chris Christie's situation at all.

Is Christie the frontrunner right now? I don't know. Is he a viable candidate? Sure. Does thinking about what happened to Giuliani help clarify Christie's situation? No. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

Just cut it out, everyone.

...and Rudy on CNN

Continuing my complain from yesterday and before...

Greg Sargent wants the networks to stop booking Rudy Giuliani to talk about national security, because "walking through the smoke and dust on 9/11 does not give him any authority or credibility on foreign policy and national security issues."  As I said yesterday about Newt Gingrich and the Today Show, this is a Republican story, not a media story.  I'm confident that if Republicans wanted someone who actually knew what they were talking about to represent them on the Nuclear Posture Review, they would let Wolf Blitzer know that Senator Dick Lugar was available.  But you know what?  Dick Lugar probably wouldn't just repeat GOP talking points, might not be willing to say whatever Rush was saying, and can't be counted on to oppose Barack Obama regardless of what Obama does.  Nor if Dick Lugar probably willing to make a fool of himself by getting the basic facts of the issue wrong in order to slam Obama as an appeasing Frenchified terrorist lover.  That's not what the Republicans want on TV; they want Rudy, and so that's what they get.

One more time: it's not Wolf Blitzer's job, nor is it the job of liberals, to pick who represents the Republicans.  If Republicans were unhappy about Giuliani giving their talking points, you can be sure that they would complain to CNN, and someone more in tune with the party would replace him -- but these complaints are all coming from the liberal side, not from conservatives.  That's who Sargent and Benen should be addressing.

(And by the way, Sargent's belief that John McCain knows what he's talking about on these issues is, in my view, quite a stretch; like Giuliani, McCain does appear to care a lot about security issues, but doesn't seem to think that means doing his homework about them.  At least in my opinion).

Iron Laws of Politics Updates

In accordance with the Iron Law of Politics that New York City Mayor is a dead-end job, Rudy Giuliani isn't running for the Senate.  Remember, all speculation about whether current or former mayors may or may not run for statewide or nationwide office is a total waste of time -- they may run, but they probably won't, and they certainly won't win. We should be free from Bloomberg-for-Anything speculation for a little while after he was almost defeated for re-election, but odds are good that should Obama's approval ratings slip any further, we'll see presidential rumors again.  Attend to them at your own peril. 


NYC Mayor is a dead-end job, but one can recover from contesting for that office and losing, and then go on to bigger and better things.  Therefore, the Iron Laws of Politics have no predictions about whether William Thompson, who lost to Bloomberg this year, will be successful if he seeks higher office. 

Iron Laws of Politics

I'd toot my own horn on this one, but it was so obvious I don't think I deserve much credit: Rudy Giuliani isn't running for Governor, after all.

Repeat after me: Mayor of New York City is a dead-end job. The two things that can be counted on are the NYC Mayors will not go on to higher office, and that the press (where are many of them located?) will spend way too much time speculating on the future plans of NYC Mayors. Lindsay, Koch, Giuliani...the ones who are foolish enough to believe the hype just wind up making fools of themselves. Having already achieved that distinction in the 2008 Republican primary in Florida, it didn't seem in the cards for Giuliani to try again. Especially since, as the Times says, he'd be losing money on the deal -- and since it's obvious that his national megaphone on terrorism is undamaged by his years out of office or the presidential campaign debacle.

Granted, I should be careful here -- he apparently hasn't ruled out a Senate bid -- but I'll be surprised if he does that, either.

I don't know that the New York Mayor iron law is as firm as the one that Larry Sabato touts about VA Governor elections (the party of the White House gets punished; credit to Sabato for a good call this time around), or the impossibility of winning a presidential nomination from a House seat, but I'm willing to trust in it until proven wrong. And, alas, I'm equally willing to trust that reporters will continue to ignore that law and spend way too much time on implausible stories such as the Bloomberg-for-President boomlet from the last cycle.

UPDATE: Not so fast! Apparently he's in...at least for now, at least according to one story...for the Senate race. Can't win 'em all; of course, the Iron Law is intact until and unless he actually wins something. We'll see, including whether he actually makes the Senate contest.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I should have known better; first update above only shows that the last sentence of the original post was correct. My fault for paying any attention to it.

Toast, Defined

Ouch. I don't think I've ever seen an incumbent (via Goddard) polling 60 points behind for an upcoming election -- even worse, really, 60 points behind for a primary. That's David Paterson's situation now. As always, you can never really tell what's in the mind of any particular pol when they decide whether to run for not, but my guess is that Paterson will soon be hearing the call of Family Reasons for not seeking a full term. I'll be surprised if he goes through with the shellacking he's in for if he runs.

Speaking of which, I'll be even more surprised if Rudy Giuliani winds up running. Siena has Andrew Cuomo solidly beating him in a general election, and while it's not an insurmountable lead, no one has ever lost money betting against anyone taking the leap from NYC Mayor to NY Governor, and I see no reason to expect that to change. Giuliani, it seems to me, has plenty to lose here; no one holds it against you if you fail to win the presidency, but his reputation would take a real hit if he gets clobbered in a gubernatorial contest. He'd be a two-time loser, and he'd also have to do plenty of back-flips and other complex maneuvers to square his old issue positions with his presidential campaign positions, and then again with the things he'd have to say to stand a chance first in the primary, and then in November. He's mostly so far retained his 9/11 aura, but there's a good chance he'd lose a large part of it if he makes this campaign and loses.