Events, since just this Saturday, can be arranged as a crest for the last two weeks of Republican presidential campaigning. John McCain struck Mitt Romney with an imputation of words on Iraq policy to Romney's tendency to equivocate, not too far off the mark. Mitt Romney retorted with a defense of topical statements — and a note of McCain's better standing with members of the other party, also not too far off the mark. In the three-day exchange of stilted indignation for like, journalists in support of each have contributed to a group conclusion that both men are sour and half again too shrewd.
But then, mercury is a toxin signifying radiance, yes? John McCain is polling on top, Mitt Romney close enough in second. It is, though performing from within the offices of glass. Those in whose mouths a thermometer has accidentally snapped can describe, in grimaces, the misfortune of a simple means for telling temperature happening to be that awful, argent liquid. Messrs. former governor and senator may face the other directly for Republican presidential nomination, but for now each competes to be the least dislikeable.
Rudy Giuliani, who trails in the race he once led, only smiled. "Some of my opponents are engaging in negative campaigning, using words like dishonesty," he said on Saturday. Save strength for the Democratic nominee, remember? "So I'm gonna try and remain positive, we're gonna talk about the things we can do for America, the things we can do for Florida. And I think that is going to be the winning strategy in Florida." National Review's Jim Geraghty demurred. "I realize Republicans are not Democrats and Florida is not South Carolina, but that is more or less the argument that John Edwards was deploying in the final days before yesterday's primary," after which the former senator from North Carolina took the spot reserved for Giuliani.
Can we take Jim up on the qualification? John Edwards, after bumptious entrances in two presidential primary seasons, has won a single state, showed a few times four years ago but otherwise stays back in place. He airs policy in the future subjunctive, because as a junior senator he legislated as a co-sponsor; or else introduced bills that were either commemorative or a little more than that, and if so checked in committee. Rudy Giuliani's mayorship, in its brasher moments — shattering welfare and elevating its dependent class, arming a police force to grapple with and pull down the streets' criminal establishment, knocking out whole sections of New York's affirmative action offices — was executive grace under fire, on the order of the Cato Institute managing from Berkeley's city hall. What most talk of, Rudy has done.
Hardly anybody in the press believes Rudy Giuliani's strategy will be effective, let alone triumphant, but the former mayor must be very pleased by how terribly his opponents have cloyed over the last ten days. If but consigned to the imaginative details of string theory, there is a Tuesday, January 29, 2008 when the Floridian GOP considers that a) the first- and second-place candidates are unsatisfying, b) they don't have to be, and that c) Rudy is still in the race. If such a day is conjectural and unreachable, at least Giuliani will be taking away some consolation.
Even better, if Rudy is nominated, conventional wisdom might then hold that it's best for a candidate to limit public displays and confine himself to a favored, few states. We — the civic enthusiasts, party members, citizens pestered by the media — may not start hearing about the next bunch until late, late 2011.