WHY THE GIULIANI PRESIDENCY WILL MAKE US NOSTALGIC FOR THE MODERATION, HUMILITY, AND MEASURED TONE OF THE BUSH YEARS

Here are two items from The New York Observer. Put them together and you have a pretty good idea of the level of bluster that will emanate from the White House if Rudy Giuliani becomes president.

Item A:

...At a town hall-style meeting with about 100 voters at a technical college in Concord [New Hampshire] on Tuesday, Giuliani encountered a voter who asked why the former mayor made "New York City a sanctuary for illegal aliens."

"You must be talking about another candidate," said Giuliani, who went on to argue that his administration urged the federal government to deport as many illegal immigrants as possible.

"Here are the three areas that you have distorted into this view that I gave sanctuary to illegal immigrants," said Giuliani, turning his back on the voter and addressing the other voters, seated on couches and loveseats around him.

He said that, as mayor he had to make sure that all kids went to school, that everyone needed access to hospitals and that illegal immigrants needed to be able to inform the police about crimes without fear of deportation.

"That's why you are wrong," said Giuliani.

"As mayor of New York City," he said. "If I was nothing else, I was rational and sensible."

Item B:

...One of Mr. Giuliani's closest advisers, Anthony Carbonetti, ... cited the familiar passage from Giuliani lore, when the former mayor expelled Yasir Arafat from a city-sponsored event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995. The incident prompted Clinton Administration officials to blame Mr. Giuliani for an embarrassing breach of international diplomacy....

Mr. Carbonetti argued that Mr. Giuliani's response as president would be consistent with his past actions, to a degree.

"Obviously as president you have to look at things differently," said Mr. Carbonetti. "But as president he would not have negotiated with Yasir Arafat."

Mr. Carbonetti said that philosophy of refusing to deal with terrorists extends to the present day, and the debate over whether to open diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria, which American officials have accused of supporting terrorism against American soldiers in Iraq.

"You don't negotiate with them," Mr. Carbonetti said. "You let them know where you stand and that it just won't be tolerated. You're ultimately going to pay the price."

Add the tone of (A) to the policies enumerated in (B) and just try to imagine what our dealings with the world will be like. Especially on foreign policy, we're talking about a presidency with more bluster, more my-way-or-the-highway attitude, more indifference to what anyone else on the planet thinks than we have even now.

And with President Rudy, the bluster is going to come from the top -- every day. Oh yeah, Bush does cockiness and swagger, but he alternates that with a tone of I wish I weren't always right about everything, but I am, so I'm afraid we're going to do things my way. Even Cheney does that more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger thing when he's on Meet the Press or chatting with Rush. A Giuliani presidency will have foreign-policy ideas a la Cheney (did I mention that that second article says that Norman Podhoretz is one of Rudy's advisers?), presented by a president who has Rumsfeld's anger level and arrogance all the time.

Oh, the world's going to love us after four years of that, on top of eight Bush years.

And going back to that exchange about immigration -- you do know,of course, that Rudy's full of it:

Giuliani's emphasis on immigration used to be different. He once told Meet the Press that, "There isn't a mayor or a public official in this country that's more strongly pro-immigrant than I am, including disagreeing with President Clinton when he signed an anti-immigration legislation about two or three years ago, which we got some amendments of to protect the rights of immigrants."

He snarls like that when he's dead wrong. And unlike Bush, he's not stupid -- he knows he's full of it. And still he snarls.

We cannot let this man be president. And he has the best chance of anyone out there right now.