Rudy Giuliani — the GOP’s Barack Obama

Howard Fineman • E-mail

WASHINGTON - In Texas, they still admire George W. Bush, leastwise the Republicans do. But when I was in Dallas the other day, they had moved on from worrying about him to a new question: Could Rudy Giuliani get the GOP nomination? They were wary of Sen. John McCain, remembering past feuds, and of “mavericks” generally. They were fascinated by Rudy, however. They loved his can-do-ness, and thought that perhaps he was the only Republican who could save the party in ’08.

Which made me realize — though I know this sounds strange — that Rudy is the Republican Barack Obama. Which, in turn, leads me to suggest a way of looking at the presidential race at this early point. The six candidates who top the polls right now fall into three bipartisan pairings. I’ll call them the Charismatics, the Practicals and the Base-Wooers.

Here is how they line up:

The Charismatics
Although they come at things from vastly different directions, Rudy and Obama share a personality-based appeal and a global perspective. In essence, they are saying: Who I am is what will bring safety to American and peace to the planet. Both candidacies are driven chiefly by concerns about our powerful, but precarious, role in the world. Neither says this in so many words; neither really has to.

Obama’s pitch is: Because of my background and my skills, I can bringing disparate peoples together. If the problem is that America is a pariah, I am, by my nature, the antidote.

It is a message that resonates especially deeply among young people, I think.

Mark Penn, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s poll taker and chief strategist, reminds me that she is running ahead of Obama among young people. That may well be true, but Obama is still a new figure on the stage. College kids, especially, are responding to him.  (Which reminds me: Last week I took the Obama campaign to task for its rather inert official Web site, which was true as far as it went. Then I got on Facebook and saw the Obama action there. It was fast and furious — and utterly spontaneous, which is the point. One group, started by a student at Bowdoin, had 55,000 members the last time I checked. Extraordinary.)

Rudy’s pitch is: The way to bring peace is to be steadfast and tough, the way George Bush has been, but also to be shrewd and detail-oriented, which Bush has not. He is saying that because of his background and skills as “America’s mayor” he can deal forcefully with terrorism: he can handle the Squeegee Men of the world and clean up the planet as he did New York after 9/11.

The appeal isn’t to kids, of course, but to boardroom and business Republicans, who are embarrassed and even outraged by the president’s bad management of Iraq and the post-Katrina recovery of the Gulf Coast. They want a manager; they think maybe Rudy is it.

The Practicals
The other co-front-runners, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain, share the benefits and drawbacks of having been on the national stage, and the Washington stage, for years now. They are tough and tested, though their hides aren’t always as tough as they look. Their appeal is basically: Been there, done that, know how to fix things up because we have the experience. They are both stuck, as Hillary said the other week, with “the responsibility gene.”

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