WHY GIULIANI LOST

Josh Marshall and Steve Benen are feeling quite a bit of schadenfreude at the apparent collapse of Rudy Giuliani's candidacy. I agree that the prognosis is grim for Rudy's campaign -- but I'm not sure I accept Steve's argument "that the more Republicans voters see Giuliani, the less they like him," or the sense many people have that Giuliani never had a chance.

For one thing, he's still in the lead or near it in just about every national GOP poll. That's meaningless, of course, given his troubles in early states, and obviously he once led by much more -- but really, how many people thought a year ago that he would even be doing this well? The conventional wisdom then was that was so out of the GOP mainstream on so many issues that he'd be eaten alive; instead, he's still (if barely) a front-list candidate.

I'd argue that Giuliani simply ran a crap campaign.

The truth is, there's not much evidence that he knows how to win any tough election. He lost his first mayoral run, in 1989; in 1993 he was running in a city suffering from crime, crack, and recession, against an incumbent whose status in the city was roughly what Jimmy Carter's was in the country in 1980. Yet Giuliani squeaked by David Dinkins in '93, winning 51%-48%. (And no, being a Republican wasn't the kiss of death -- Fiorello La Guardia and John Lindsay had won mayoral elections as Republicans in New York.)

Giuliani won handily in 1997, but crime was down (locally and nationally) and the economy was booming, in the city and elsewhere. By contrast, when he was planning to run for Senate against Hillary Clinton in 2000, as a recent New York Times article made clear, he was an unfocused, undisciplined candidate who probably would have suffered an embarrassing loss if cancer and scandal hadn't forced him out of the race:

...As spring arrived, Mr. Giuliani had yet to give a major speech on federal issues. He was barely campaigning upstate. Mr. Giuliani dismissed the concerns of Republican leaders, explaining that he, unlike Mrs. Clinton, had a full-time job....

Mr. Giuliani headed upstate, for a Republican dinner in Binghamton. He spoke for exactly 22 minutes, stood for an eight-minute news conference, and then turned for home. Less than a week later, he abruptly canceled four upstate events because, he said, he wanted to attend the rescheduled opening game of the Yankees....

By the time Mr. Giuliani stepped in front of the cameras to announce he was dropping out, Republicans had already concluded that the mayor would not stay in the race: indeed, many were praying he would not. His cancer seemed almost beside the point.

Evidence of his lack of interest had been building for months: the erratic campaign schedule, his treatment of upstate voters, the public way he was carrying on his relationship with Ms. Nathan. His poll numbers were sinking (a New York Times/CBS News poll taken after the Dorismond episode found Mrs. Clinton leading the mayor by 10 points statewide), and he had become a punch line on late-night talk shows....

Part of his problem may be that he doesn't work with experienced pros who might be able to bring their campaign experience to bear to save him from himself. He likes yes-men and loyalists, regardless of their level of expertise; the big kahuna in his campaign is 38-year-old Tony Carbonetti, an old family friend who's never done any political work of any kind for anyone else.

And Giuliani made one mistake he absolutely couldn't recover from: He decided to blow off Iowa and New Hampshire. Giuliani compares the campaign to a nine-inning baseball game, insisting that it won't be won in the early innings; that's absolutely the wrong analogy. Trying to win a nomination without genuflecting before the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire is like trying to open a business in a Mob neighborhood and refusing to pay protection money. You might have a hell of a business plan, but you're not going to make slow, steady progress into the black if they burn down your store the first month you're open.

Smart campaign people could have told Rudy that -- but he probably wouldn't have listened anyway. And it's good thing to, because, litmus tests or no litmus tests, he's still the kind of messianic jerk Republicans love, and I still believe he could have, God help us, been a contender.