The Front-Runners: Rudy Giuliani

"New York was warm on that spring day in 1961, remembers Jack O'Leary, a teacher and role model for 17-year-old Rudy Giuliani, and a confidant for the boy's father, Harold Giuliani. Harold had asked O'Leary, then a Christian Brother, to Sunday afternoon dinner at the Giuliani's home on Long Island: he said he had something he needed to discuss. ... 'Rudy was very calm -- no crying, no hysterics,' O'Leary remembers. 'He'd been brought up to be loyal to family and the people close to him.' In an interview, Giuliani says he can't remember much about the episode O'Leary describes. Nor does he remember his father ever lecturing him about loyalty, only that his dad routinely exemplified the quality until it acquired the force of an ethic in the Giuliani household. ... But there were limits in 1961 to what the 17-year-old Giuliani knew of his father's past, particularly the extent of his allegiance to relatives."

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Washington Post writer Michael Leahy was online Monday, Dec. 17 at noon ET to discuss his article exploring Rudy Giuliani, his relationship with his father, and his campaign for the presidency.

The transcript follows.

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Michael Leahy: Thanks for joining the chat. I see we have a lot of questions and comments, so we'll get started.

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Arlington, Va.: Mr. Leahy: That was a wonderfully insightful story about Rudy Giuliani. Looking forward to your next story. My question: Do you know if he ever considered leaving New York as a young man to launch a political career somewhere else, or was it always assumed he was going to do it in New York?

Michael Leahy: Thanks for the nice comment. I've never heard or read anything that indicated he flirted with the possibility of pursuing a political career outside of New York (and remember that he made his name in New York while U.S. Attorney there). The more interesting question to me is what explains his change of parties. Early in his life, he had been much more than a casual Democrat, of course. In his 20s, he had been a state Democratic committeeman in NY, and it wasn't until much later that he began contemplating a party switch, which served him well in New York, politically speaking (a consideration quite apart from the obvious reality that a Republican president would have been unlikely to appoint a Democrat as U.S. Attorney). Had he remained a Democrat, he would likely have had to wait his turn behind a long line of other New York Democrats before pursuing public office. There were far fewer promising big-name Republican hopefuls in NY when Giuliani jumped into the political scene. That paucity meant that a talented ambitious young Republican could climb in a hurry. When you think of New York Republicans over the years, there have been several who have soared in a hurry because of that lack of a queue -- Sens. Buckley and Goodell, Gov. Pataki, etc. Clearly, Mayor Giuliani's ideology evolved, but the question of his motivations and reasoning for the party switch is an interesting one worth further exploration.

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Bethesda, Md.: Great story on Giuliani. Do any of his college buddies plan on going on the campaign trail with him? And how do you view his progress in primary states once he's out of the Iowa Caucus?

Michael Leahy: Some of his college and fraternity friends, like Gene Hart, have already been out on the trail for him. Hart has been in Iowa frequently and has plans to campaign for Giuliani in Florida. Sal Scarpato (the fraternity brother who once got in a fight with Giuliani) is today a Giuliani contributor. Others plan to help his campaign, so they'll be around.

As to your other question, the Giuliani campaign makes no secret of their hope to do reasonably well in New Hampshire and South Carolina. But they talk of Florida as if it is a firewall state for them -- "firewall" having becoming a favored term in political parlance, as campaign operatives commonly hate to use a phrase like "make-or-break" (too scary). But it certainly seems, in the absence of wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, that Florida will be make or break for the campaign. Certainly, when it comes to Florida, the Giuliani campaign seems to be all-in. You probably noticed that he delivered a major speech there over the weekend at a time when most of the other candidates were concentrating on either Iowa or New Hampshire.

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Montgomery Village, Md.: Michael, what happens in Iowa and/or New Hampshire if they experience the same kind of really bad weather as last week on caucus or primary day? Will the results mean anything if the turnout is incredibly low? It's kind of fun to think about all the strategy, money, state fairs, home visits, etc., being made irrelevant by Mother Nature. Perhaps it would be a fitting result for advancing this selection process so far forward. Also, has anyone thought about how much more expensive television advertising will be for Tsunami Tuesday on February 5, with the Super Bowl just two days earlier? Mo Udall had the right idea years ago -- four regional primaries on the first Tuesdays of March, April, May and June. Only delegates elected on those days could vote at the conventions.

Michael Leahy: Thanks for the great observations and questions. Re: Bad weather -- experienced observers, relying on the lessons of past caucuses and primaries in those two states, believe the devout and the junkies, particularly older voters, will show regardless of weather. The larger question, they argue, is how involved the young and particularly first-timers will be. I think all this is true. I remember a conversation I had, four years ago, with a New Hampshire woman in her 80s who was loyal to Joe Lieberman. Somebody wondered aloud about what the weather might be like on primary day and she recalled that she had walked for a half-hour in deep snow, four years earlier, to vote in the primary. Voters in New Hampshire and Iowa take these things seriously, though particularly experienced voters for whom these rituals are a deeply meaningful tradition.

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Long Island, New York: I may be representative of a bunch of voters that the Rudy campaign fears -- the New Yorkers who loved him as mayor who absolutely think he'd be a disaster as president (he values loyalty above skill, he's dismissive of opposing views, etc.). Many New Yorkers I know across the political spectrum (Democrats and Republicans alike) feel this way, and it seems as though it would be an effective tool against him as the GOP nominee -- in my opinion he'd be hard-pressed to win New York in a general election.

Michael Leahy: I'm going to post the occasional comment here and there. To the Long Island reader's last point, I'd simply point out that the odds are against any Republican candidate carrying New York in the general election.

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St. Paul, Minn.: Does the mistress-transportation-on-the-taxpayer's-dime story have legs? What else is "in the pipeline"?

Michael Leahy: The short answer is no one knows for sure. The polls in the coming weeks may provide some clue.

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Oxford, Miss.: Thanks for a fine, well-written article on an interesting timeframe in Giuliani's life. Based on your research, is there evidence that Giuliani is capable of overriding his upbringing and history of allegiances to make sound presidential decisions, placing cabinet members and advisers in positions based on public interest?

Michael Leahy: Thanks for the kind comment. It's not my role as a journalist to answer the question you've posed, but I think some voters will certainly be wrestling with the matter you're pondering here.

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Article link: Can you please post a link to the article? I missed it over the weekend.

washingtonpost.com: Pledging Allegiance (Post, Dec. 16)

Michael Leahy: Sure. There you go.

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Stewart, Calif.: Giuliani's troubled relationship with his adult children seems to be a key issue, and one at odds with his close relationship with his own father. Could you tell us more about the cause of this situation? Do his adult children feel he has not treated their mother respectfully? Also, on a related topic, why does Giuliani seem to have trouble with marriages and fidelity? If he is such a fiercely loyal person, why is he so disloyal to the women in his life? The issues with his children and marriages could be major problems for him with women voters.

Michael Leahy: One of the things that amuses me about political chats is that so many of the questions sound rhetorically sneaky -- designed less to be answered than merely to be posted. But we'll post this reader's comment from Stewart, Calif., just the same.

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Santa Monica, Calif.: Mr. Leahy, terrific article -- I really enjoyed reading it. Giuliani's most endearing quality seems to be his loyalty to the people closest to him, despite their tarnished reputations or troubled pasts. I find myself wondering, however, what this man would be willing to overlook in the interest of preserving a relationship. He continued supporting his longtime friend Alan Placa despite serious allegations concerning an encounter with a underage boy that appear to possess a substantial amount of validity. If this man were to become president, what other kind of things could he overlooked? Would he keep someone on his staff even if they were found to be an alleged child molester? Could Giuliani's loyalty to his friends cease to be an admirable trait and develop into a liability? Thanks for reading.

Michael Leahy: Thank you for your comment. Again, I think this is a fundamental question with which voters will be grappling.

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Helena, Mont.: There seems to be conventional wisdom that Giuliani will do well in the California Republican primary -- but I think the primary voters are not the California general election voters, and are much more conservative. I do not think Arnold S. could have become governor through the normal election process, and I do not think that Giuliani's more moderate social policy stances will do him any good in California in the primary season.

Michael Leahy: This is such a good question. As a native Californian, I can tell you you're right: Republican primary voters skew much more to the Right than the California general electorate (just as Democratic primary voters in many instances skew disproportionately to the Left). Los Angeles' former mayor Richard Riordan, generally viewed as a moderate Republican, found this out first-hand in unsuccessfully vying for statewide office there, many years ago. So California is not a done deal among Republican voters for Mayor Giuliani.

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Oviedo, Fla.: Be blunt -- can you really be elected president when your own kids don't care for you or your politics? Ronald Reagan did it, but he dismissed those kids and somehow got away with it. In this era of media scrutiny, won't he be stalled because of this? Plus his awful handling of their mom...

Michael Leahy: Well, let's be fair and consider what we don't know. We don't know about the depths of those strains. We don't know if the Mayor and/or his children might be, at this very moment, working to improve their relationship or achieve a reconciliation. People repair relationships all the time in the world, so there is no reason to believe (and nothing to indicate) that these strains are necessarily permanent.

Now consider your other point: that it made no difference in Ronald Reagan's broad popularity, which, I believe, is absolutely true. And think of all the "stunning" news that voters have had to absorb about their leading politicians over, say, the last two decades. Think of all the shocked voters and then how those same voters digested the info and moved on. I think the recent historical evidence is that these disclosures have had a minimal impact on races. But we'll see how this plays out with Rudy Giuliani.

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Michael Leahy: Well, as usual, we've run far over our allotted time. Thanks for all the fine questions and kind comments. Looking forward to chatting with you again soon.

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