There is no way to put a gloss on the complete and utter failure of Rudy Giuliani’s Presidential run. It ranks as the single worst campaign in modern political history, a statement born out by the numbers: $50 million dollars spent versus one (1) delegate won. This startling incongruence– combined with Rudy’s neutered and anemic performance as a candidate– seemed like the end of a great beast. America’s Mayor was sent back to New York, tail tucked between his legs, finding solace only in the plastic of his mannequin bride and left to wonder, like all living objects of universal disgust, why no one liked him. It couldn’t have happened to a worse guy.
Giuliani reminds me of Dracula in the late-period Universal horror films, the ones where Frankenstein’s Monster fights the Wolfman and Dracula and Abbott and Costello. These films are formulaic in the extreme. Each ends with Dracula dying, and each begins with the corpse falling from the coffin. The stake is dislodged from the heart. The old dessicated skeleton returns to life, growing sinew and muscle on bone and flesh on sinew.
The vampire king emerges from death for one more hissing bloodfeast.
From the first lisping giggle, I knew that Rudy’s keynote speech was his return to form. The dark lord had finished with the daylight, had cast off the veneer of respectability and aristocratic manners, and returned to his roots as a cheap thug in a bad suit, his oversized shoulder pads disguising the feminity of his frame, and was ready to sink his fangs into the first available neck.
Prepped by McCain’s handlers, Rudy was without armor or sword. His one rhetorical device stripped away for the first time in almost seven years, America’s Mayor had to pretend that it was a 9/10 world; he had to tap into to his previous self, the earlier incarnation. Presented with a unique challenge– “Don’t Mention September 11th”– Rudy drew from his Inner Well of Hidden Strength and discovered anew that it was as it had been: a cesspool, a rotting festering sinkhole buried deep and clogged with a lifetime of malice and hatred.
I’m not sure at what point– maybe when America’s Mayor openly laughed at the idea of public service, or maybe when he characterized Obama’s life-story, pejoratively, as something that could happen Only in America– but somewhere in that despicable rant, I understood. I realized. I got it.
As a serious candidate for National Office, Rudy had burned himself out, yes, but now he has a new niche. He has become the mean-spirited little monster that the Republicans will bring out every two-to-four years. Whenever a nasty speech needs making, whenever an enemy requires besmirching. He will be there, snorting and laughing at his own jokes. He is a hack and a hatchet-man, the one who will do what the others will not. He is the in-house vandal, a dog that attacks on command and then returns, its mouth covered in blood, to lap at its master’s hand, longing only for approval.
But don’t fool yourself: his masters still hate him. Everyone hates him. Other than a brief blip in which American society went crazy enough that it finally– at last– was operating on Rudy’s wavelength of constant paranoia and aggression, this has been the defining factor of his career. He was voted into office not for likability or personal charm. He was elected as Mayor for a simple reason: he had promised to brutalize criminals. He knows that he is on the fringe of the party– that he is a creature viewed with suspicion, that old women from Nebraska cross themselves and hide cloves of garlic under their skirts whenever he enters a room– but he has no other options. No one else will accept him. This knowledge makes him dangerous, more eager to perform, to make sure that the knife unerringly passes under the ribs.
The small man will never get his balcony, but he is allowed to borrow podiums, and it is from these that he demonstrates his vacuity. There was a time, and I remember it, when Rudy seemed as if he might be a political figure with Ideas. You could disagree with those Ideas and you could be disturbed by the ancillary damage that accompanied them, but you never felt that you were watching a charade or a put-on.
There was a time, however distant, when he seemed his own man. His brief ascendancy has changed him. He got a taste of the real, pure stuff and wanted more. Painfully aware of his personal limitations, the only way Rudy could imagine himself scoring the mainline was to become yet another unsuccessful political void. Mitt Romney without the charm. Huckabee without the brains. John McCain without the competence. A sucking pull of desperation, doing whatever is necessary to Win. There is no value or long-held position that he will not reverse. Nothing is beyond compromise. Guns, God, abortion, gays, Jews, whatever. Even New York itself will be betrayed on command. If we woke up tomorrow & the nation had placed a value on lawlessness rather than order, Rudy would be first in line to refute his time as the Ball Buster. Reduction in crime rates would be blamed on subordinates, on underlings– America’s Mayor would recast himself as the man who had favored chaos but was held back by career politicians and the bureaucrats.
Yet there is a solace: the week is over. It is time for Republicans to stake the heart and hide the body. America’s Mayor will pass to his undying death, waiting in stasis for the next call of his masters. He will return, as he always returns, with his cheeks purpled by makeup and tufts of grey hair framing a face that he stole from Max Schreck. Watch his tongue, see how he licks his lips.
It is not a question of if, but of when.
Some monsters never die.
