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2008: The Changes in Giuliani

May 29, 2007, 8:50 am

By Sarah Wheaton

As he travels around the country seeking the G.O.P. nomination, Rudolph W. Giuliani has offered a calmer side to his personality than what he often displayed while mayor of New York. The Times’s Michael Powell looks back on his political journey:

Mr. Giuliani was a Kennedy Democrat who has allied himself with Bill Clinton on issues like banning assault weapons but has also proclaimed himself a Reagan Republican. Ideological consistency is not Mr. Giuliani’s groove; leadership and destiny are. So is self-assurance. Ask Mr. Giuliani how to impose fiscal discipline on Washington, and he notes: “I’m an expert at it.” Mention New York and he says: “The turnaround was massive, palpable; nobody can really deny it.” Quiz him about presidential qualifications, and he says that there is no way to prepare, but that “being mayor of New York” comes as close as it gets.

As for terror, “I understand terrorism in a way that is equal to or exceeds anyone else,” Mr. Giuliani says.

Mr. Giuliani will drop a self-deprecating joke. When annoyance tickles at the back of his spine, he has learned to smile rather than scowl. But he suffers no deficit of self-confidence.
The Boston Globe examines how Mitt Romney’s ground game and early advertising helped him pull ahead of the Republican field in Iowa—and the new pressures that come with “frontrunner” status.

Janet Hook of The Los Angeles Times reports that while John Edwards’s focus on poverty has helped him surpass better financed Democrats in Iowa, but “the strategy carries risks, in part because it speaks most directly to a slice of the electorate that has notably little political clout.”

One of those better financed candidates, Senator Barack Obama, plans to outline his health care proposal in Iowa City today. Mike Glover of The Associated Press offers a preview:

Under Obama’s proposal, every American would be required to carry health insurance, and the Illinois senator would create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies in offering the coverage. In essence, Obama’s plan retains the private insurance system but injects additional money into the system to pay for the expanded coverage.

Those who can’t afford coverage would get a subsidy on a sliding scale depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers. The plan that would be offered would be similar to the one covering members of Congress.

Is a man who consistently fails to put the butter away after breakfast fit to be president? Michelle Obama evidently thinks so. Mr. Obama’s daughters also accompanied him on the campaign trail last weekend.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile, plans a policy address while in New Hampshire today. Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor and Democratic contender-turned-supporter of

Senator Clinton is taking an especially active role in her campaign. “Aides acknowledge privately that Vilsack’s work for the campaign has the look of a rehearsal for the role of running mate, should Clinton win the nomination,” writes Thomas Beaumont in The Des Moines Register. “But while he embarks on a busy summer for Clinton, no prospective No. 2 on a hypothetical Clinton ticket has a higher bar than Vilsack, whose first task is to ensure the senator’s success in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses.”

The A.P. also reports on Democratic candidates’ pursuit of “superdelegates,” a top group of the party’s elected officials who can vote for whomever they please at the nominating convention and who comprise of 14 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

Reporters aren’t the only ones feeling a bit overtaxed by the huge field of presidential candidates. “Burdened by the White House’s wartime security needs, the persistent threat of terrorism and a field of at least 20 presidential contenders, the Secret Service was showing signs of strain even before the Department of Homeland Security ordered protection for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as of May 3, the earliest a candidate has ever been assigned protection in an election season,” reports The Washington Post.