Call Him an Oddball if You Must, but Do Call
Assuming that they have even tuned in to this interminable presidential campaign, many Americans just caught a glimpse of a Rudolph W. Giuliani long known to New Yorkers. Note that we said a Rudolph Giuliani. There are several versions of the former mayor.
Understandably, he prefers to project the ones that would get any politician dreaming about a spot on Mount Rushmore: Rudy the clear-thinking, Rudy the principled, Rudy the focused, Rudy the unswerving (never mind his recent swivels to the right on issues like
immigration, gun control and abortion).New Yorkers are well acquainted with at least one other version. That would be Rudy the loopy. The weirdness factor, as some have called it, is as much a part of the Giuliani package as 9/11, banished squeegee men and shuttered porn parlors.
Non-New Yorkers got a taste of it the other day when Mr. Giuliani interrupted his speech — a very important speech — to the
National Rifle Association in Washington. His cellphone rang. It was his wife, Judith. Smack in the middle of his talk, he whipped out the phone.“Hello, dear,” he said in a syrupy voice. “I’m talking to the members of the N.R.A. right now. Would you like to say hello?” He listened, and laughed. “I love you, and I’ll give you a call as soon as I’m finished, O.K.?” he said. He listened a bit more. “O.K., have a safe trip. Bye-bye. Talk to you later, dear. I love you.”
Campaign aides said it was a spontaneous moment, with Mrs. Giuliani calling just before she boarded a plane.
Granted, lots of people call loved ones before a flight. But a presidential candidate doesn’t shut off his phone, and instead takes a call, in the middle of a major speech? The episode was so bizarrely cutesy-poo that more than a few people in the audience went, Eeeww! Nor was it an isolated incident; the same thing happened in Florida three months ago.
The cellphone routine was not Mr. Giuliani’s sole icky moment last week.
While rattling the cup in London, he told reporters that he was “probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.” Oh? And who, someone asked, also makes that rarefied list? “Bill Clinton, Hillary,” he replied before aides hustled him away.
Offhand, we can think of any number of Americans who might be more famous worldwide. President Bush, anyone? How about Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey?
The real revelation was Mr. Giuliani’s sense of his own importance. It was on display again in his N.R.A. speech. Freshly returned from London, he told the audience, “It’s nice to be here in England.” Then, seeing an American flag, he said, “Ah, America.”
He meant it as a joke about the mental scrambling that the rigors of campaigning can cause. But the underlying assumption was that people were so focused on him that they knew his travel schedule by heart. Many in the audience didn’t get it.
They found it weird, just as some New Yorkers did when Mr. Giuliani used to begin speeches with raspy imitations of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone — as if everyone knew “The Godfather” as well as he did. Often enough, people wondered if he had a sore throat.
The weirdness factor has a long history.
It kicked in hard several times with the mayor’s cross-dressing skits, including one time when he squealed in delight as Donald Trump nuzzled his fake breasts. It turned up in 1999 when he joked to a black audience, of all groups, about the hard time he had getting a New York taxi to stop for him.
It emerged when he told reporters that he was leaving his wife — his second wife — before he bothered to tell her. It resurfaced a few months ago when wife No. 3 allowed that this was her third marriage and not her second, as she had let everyone believe for years.
Other incidents could be cited, up to and including the eeeww-inducing cellphone schmooze at the lectern.
On blogs and in print, some people characterized the phone call as more than weird. They called it a choreographed stunt.
But maybe it is not fair to challenge Mr. Giuliani’s motives. Perhaps we should follow the example that he set the other week when he rebuked Mrs. Clinton for the way she criticized Ge
n. David H. Petraeus over the Iraq war.
“I can’t imagine why we can’t get beyond maligning other people’s motives nowadays in politics,” said the man who, as mayor, dismissed those who dared disagree with him as intellectually dishonest, morally deficient or simply, to use one of his favorite words, jerky.
