Horowitz: Giuliani Keeps Digging—And Its Not Helping

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

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Rob Horowitz

Refusing to apologize and only backing down a little, Rudy Giuliani keeps making matters even worse by ham-handed efforts to both elaborate on and explain away his unacceptable, inaccurate and simply ignorant comments about President Obama at a fundraiser for Governor Scott Walker in New York City last week. Whether in a 1200 word opinion column in The Wall Street Journal this past Sunday or in various television and newspaper interviews, the former New York City Mayor and 2008 candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination is failing to heed the still sage advice that “if you are in a hole, stop digging.”

At last week’s fundraiser, as reported by Politico, Giuliani said, ““I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

Since then, Giuliani keeps saying he is not questioning ‘what is in the President’s heart” or his ‘patriotism”, while continuing to do exactly that—and in a not particularly deft way. My personal favorite was his attempt to beat back charges of racism by mentioning that Obama had a white mother. “I thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, and most of this he learned from white people. This isn’t racism. This is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism,” said the former Mayor.

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In his Wall Street Journal opinion piece Giuliani softens his harsh tone arguing that President Obama does not talk enough about American exceptionalism and is too often critical of our nation.  To the contrary, President Obama’s remarks are replete with mentions of the promise and unique strength of America.  All Mr. Giuliani had to do was watch the President give his most recent State of the Union Address.As President Obama remarked just a few short weeks ago., “America, for all that we have endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong. )At this moment -- with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production -- we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth.”   

After all, President Obama’s breakthrough moment on the national stage, was his patriotic speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, which centered on  how there were not separate blue or red Americas, but just one United States of America.

Perhaps most disturbing in Giuliani’s comments are his implicit rejection of what actually makes America exceptional. It is that we are a nation of immigrants founded on universal ideals and principles—not on nationality, ethnicity or tribe. Our signature strength is that people of all different backgrounds, cultures and faith traditions come together in one nation—unified by this broad common ground.

What appears to be driving Giuliani’s animus is the President’s unwillingness to frame our fight against terrorism generally and ISIS is particular as a fight against “Radical Islam” or “Islamic Extremists.”  He is far from alone in this criticism. But the President’s position, in which reasonable people can disagree, is not a question of fundamental values, but of strategy. Obama believes that framing the battle in these terms makes it more difficult to enlist the predominantly Muslim nations in the Middle East to our side, risks alienating 1.6 billion Muslims, and gives ISIS precisely the kind of red meat rhetoric that serves as a recruiting tool.

While there was much grumbling about Giuliani’s comments behind the scenes, only a few Republicans stepped up to publicly criticize the former Mayor.  Jeb Bush’s campaign released the following statement. "Governor Bush doesn't question President Obama's motives. He does question President Obama's disastrous policies."  That’s the approach Rudy should try next time he decides to criticize the President.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

 

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