By Richard Baehr
The rubber chicken circuit can be brutal. So one of the best indicators of how likely it is that a potential candidate will in fact run for national office is how much effort he expends to campaign for his party's candidates in the Congressional election two years before the presidential race.
Tomorrow night, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be in Chicago. He will be here for a fundraiser for Dave McSweeney, the Republican candidate for the 8th Congressional District in Illinois. While there are a few dozen endangered GOP incumbents around the country, McSweeney's race may represent one of the best pickup opportunities for the GOP in 2006, as he tries to unseat first-term Democratic Congresswoman Melissa Bean in a district that President Bush captured with 56% of the vote in 2004.
Giuliani is also providing support for other GOP Congressional and Senate candidates, as well as to Ralph Reed, the GOP candidate for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia. Giuliani has been a busy man since he left office in New York at the end of 2001. He has consulted with municipalities on how they can reduce their crime rates, created an investment banking firm, associated with a Texas law firm, and given lots of speeches. At age 62, he appears to be happily married, financially successful and cured of the prostate cancer that forced him out of the 2000 US Senate race in New York against Hillary Clinton.
Many of Giuliani's talks are on the topic of leadership. Democrats have run on the issue of competence several times in recent decades, and not very competently. Michael Dukakis' "Massachusetts miracle" did not resonate nationally, in part due to the frozen fish personality of the former Massachusetts governor. John Kerry also campaigned on competence, but could not articulate how his approach would be different from the President's on Iraq, the issue where his critique of Bush's competence rang loudest. |