If, like the NYFD, you hate Rudy Giuliani, you will go bananas for Matt Tabibi’s verbal pummeling of “America’s mayor” in Rolling Stone. Here’s a teaser:
If this is a guy who chews over a perceived slight in the middle of a victory lap, what’s he going to be like with his finger on the button? Even Richard Nixon wasn’t wound that tight.…
[Rudy’s] political strength — and he knows it — comes from America’s unrelenting passion for never bothering to take that extra step to figure shit out. If you think you know it all already, Rudy agrees with you. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, they’re probably traitors, and Rudy, well, he’ll keep an eye on ’em for you. Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully’s disposal.
.… Whether Rudy believes in this kind of politics reflexively, as the psychologically crippled Bush does, or as a means to an end, as Karl Rove does, isn’t clear. But there’s no question that Giuliani has made the continuation of Swift-Boating politics a linchpin of his candidacy.
Happy reading.