Outside Counsel

It is hard to know how New York Democrats will vote when our new, earlier primary rolls around: I imagine that Hillary will do all right, but I can't picture her rolling to a big win. My sense is that people like her, but they don't love her, and although she is a two-term senator, she really can't lay claim to favorite daughter status. Professional Democrats will support her, and those are the folks who vote in primaries. But professional Democrats also vote for their own personal agendas, and there are plenty of those to go around.

On the Republican side, it seems to me that the New Yorker is likewise a long shot. Certainly he would be a tough sell to anybody who actually lived in New York City during his time as US Attorney and Mayor. I admired his performance on September 11, but in the collective memory it seems to have morphed into something other than what it was. People think that he did something wonderfully courageous, when in fact what he did was assure everyone that they were in it together, and that they would get through it together as well. "Was I scared?" I recall him saying a day or so later. "I was terrified!" That was as human as I ever saw him, and I respected him for that. Of course, in comparison to the Leader of the Free World, Rudy was pretty good, but people recall Bush in the smoldering ruins as a fine moment now too. Funny how that goes. There was a commercial a few years back that had squirrels shaking their tiny fists and jeering a car that had nearly run them over, and that is how Bush looked to me. I guess America doesn't want to remember it that way, which helped Bush, and may help Giuliani.

It's one damn thing after another with Rudy, and I don't see how he can overcome it all. The Village Voice reports that he has four World Series rings, a clear violation of ethics law if he received them in office. I'm not sure what his strong suit was supposed to be, but accepting expensive presents seems to rule out integrity. Family values left the station a long time ago. Consistency? Not for the "Republican playing a Democrat playing a Republican." It seems to me that just about the only thing he has going is the relative weakness of the field. I wonder if that is enough.