"Well I, for One, Believe in the Ladder to Heaven/ Oh Yeah, Yeah, Yeah… 9/11."

Maybe it's pundit's bias, but this seems like the funniest Onion story in a long, long while.

At a well-attended rally in front of his new Ground Zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11.

"My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise," said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. "As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all."

If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world's conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.

There might be more to say about why Giuliani is considered a legitimate candidate for president… but I can't think of it.

Tim Cavanaugh's immortal take on Rudy is here.

Comments

[ed]

Well, he was a mayor, and...um...he's a Yankees fan and...er...did I mention he was a mayor?

[madpad]

Slate's got a good take on this as well. Pretty much nails it with this chestnut:

"President Rudy would reject compromise with antagonists and ignore the duties of governing. After a few years, he'd be on nonspeaking terms with much of his Cabinet, never mind other world leaders."

[..]

those damned yankees!!

[Grotius]

I really must read The Onion more often.

[...]

owning the baseball world isn't enough? now they have to take over the whole U.S.? i wonder how much money is steinbrenner willing to fork out to giuliani's campaign.

[JimmyDaGeek]

Maybe we'll finally find Saddam's WMDs up there...

Where were you when they built the ladder to heaven?
Did it make you feel like cryin'
Or did you think it was kinda gay?
Well I, for one, believe in the ladder to heaven.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah...9/11.
I said 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, Ni-hi, hi-hine...
...Eleven

[mitch]

David Weigel,

Aw, come on, Giuliani is a more "legitimate" candidate than Obama, isn't he, based on his executive experience? And his executive experience has got to be as good an asset as Ms. Clinton's time in the Senate.

Who do think is more "legitimate" than Giuliani, Romney and Richardson, the governors?

[9/11 widow]

Too soon, Onion, too soon.

[madpad]

Who do think is more "legitimate" than Giuliani, Romney and Richardson, the governors?

Guliani was a mayor, not a governor.

[mitch]

Madpad,

I mean to say, "who do you think is a more legitimate cnadidate than Giuliani, governors like Richardson and Romney?"

[Evan!]

That 9/11-milking dirtscumfuck is, unfortunately, perfectly qualified for the dirtscumfuck office of President.

All this horseshit about "oh, qualified this, qualified that" is empty and useless. You fools afford WAY too much credit to the office of the president...it's as if we're electing a King. The only qualification I'm interested in is someone who will pare down the power of the office, rather than expand it grossly as the current dirtscumfuck has done.

[David]

The only qualification I'm interested in is someone who will pare down the power of the office, rather than expand it grossly as the current dirtscumfuck has done.

Well, then Rudy's definitely not your guy.

[ed]

Oh, I almost forgot: Cancer Survivor!

[D.A. Ridgely]

Giuliani isn't going to be popular in these circles, but that has little to do with whether he will be a viable candidate. He's smart, driven and has an independent streak and he's not John McCain. He's not perceived as being too liberal for moderate conservatives or too conservative for moderate liberals, he's a good campaigner and likely to be effective at fund raising. Substantively, I'd say being Mayor of New York is better experience than a legislative career or being governor of many states, or at least as good. And, yes, most people outside New York who know him at all remember him from his largely positive 9/11 exposure.

No, I'm not a supporter, but the sad fact is, not only that the Republicans and the nation could do much worse than Giuliani, they probably will.

[Lincoln]

Caveat: I'm no fan of hitching yourself to the 9/11 bandwagon and my horse in this race is Ron Paul.

That said, who is truely qualified for president of the United States? The Onion piece is funny but Weigel's comments are essentially akin to saying George Bush scored the lowest on his SAT out of the entire executive branch. No shit. Throughout the history of the world it has been the charasmatic who have won (or stolen) office and not the "qualified." Then again, my knowledge of history is limited to wikipedia and the HBO series Rome. So let me say this another way:

The most important attribute a CEO can have is attracting and retaining the best talent. He or she does not have to know the most about a widget to run the widget company. The soft skills are way more important. Ronald Reagan got Sununu and Kennedy got McNamara. I'm sure if Paul were elected 10 years ago we could have gotten Friedman to run the Fed.

So, given that premise, who is more of a leader than Rudy G on the right and Obama on the left? They are the most charasmatic and the least divisive candidates out there.

[joe]

I'm just hoping Guiliani's You-Tubed media flameout takes place after he secures the Republican nomination.

What do you think it will be? Making a teenaged female staffer cry in public? Saying the NYPD knows how to handle "someone like" Obama? Scary-inappropriate fury when someone gets the best of him in a debate?

Look at George Allen - you just can't manage a loose cannon in the age of You Tube.

[jtuf]

NYC's population of 8 million makes it bigger than 39 of the states. So experience wise he is as qualified as the former govenor of MA. Stil, I wouldn't vote for him because of his policies. He greatly expanded the definition of public health.

[JD]

Giuliani isn't going to be popular in these circles, but that has little to do with whether he will be a viable candidate. He's smart, driven and has an independent streak...

I think "independent streak" means "not a viable candidate". Parties don't like loose cannons, they like reliable, glad-handing old warhorses. (And mixed metaphors.) Bill Clinton is really about the most "independent" major party candidate I can think of from recent years, and even he wasn't all that independent.

Part of the problem may be that the mayorship of NYC is a pretty powerful position with a fairly free hand, and Giuliani, as Slate notes, is not used to convincing and ingratiating, he's used to having his way. I don't think that's going to work so well as a candidate or a President.

[Bergamot]

The article is so-so, but the logo is hilarious

[anon NYC]

He was a great mayor of NYC aho turned around the city, but I guess that means nothing to you. Dave, are you sure you write for the right site. Your lefty views seem like you should write at Daily Kos.

[skidmark]

Juliani is a despicable piece of human fecal matter.

[Garth]

I lived in NYC for the majority of Rudy's reign and was among the very few who thought him a petulant, tyrrantical, bully and who considered his quality of life initiative distrubing. Since I worked on Wall Street I was very much alone vis my peers. They thought generalized police brutality, the manhandling of fare-skippers and squeegiemen, the pogrom against noise and all that just peachy.

What's very odd is how his personal foibles (the affair, the treatment of his ex, his wacky reactions) never really surfaced in the American conscience. Everyone thought Dole was "mean" but why exactly? Why don't we just reflexively consider Rudy "unbalanced"?

[Rhywun]

I lived in NYC for the majority of Rudy's reign and was among the very few who thought him a petulant, tyrrantical, bully and who considered his quality of life initiative distrubing.

You must have not have paid attention to the news, because most of NYC felt the same way. I work on Wall Street too, and trust me, that population is not representative of NYC at all. If I wanted to know what central New Jersey was thinking, I'd pay attention to my peers. Alas, I don't.

And thanks for contributing, "skidmark". Now go away.

[joe]

People forget, Guiliani's numbers were in the crapper before 9/11. Sort of like Bush's.

[JD]

I dunno, Rhywun - while I wouldn't claim that he was universally loved, not by a long shot, he did get himself re-elected, and re-elected by a large margin. If so many people hated him so much, he wouldn't have trounced Messinger so solidly. I always felt like I was running into people who were normally left-leaning civil-liberties types who were inexplicably fond of Giuliani. I think some of that was the prosperity and crime rate - no matter what their political views, people did like feeling like they weren't going to be raped and murdered on the way home. Yes, I know that Giuliani didn't have that much to do with that, but this is people's feelings we're talking about...

[skidmark]

Rhyun, so are U.

[TrickyVic]

Rudy's greatest victory was the conquering of the Squeegee man.

NYCers either loved him or hated him and the line was dependent on your view of authority. Unlike Garth, most the people I know didn't like him but he did have many fans, got elected twice.

Before rudy, the cops did mess with you for petty stuff. We use to sit in the park and drink a beer in a brown paper bag. You really had to be bad to get their attention, then they would beat the crap out of you. Rudy cracked down on the cops too. Something little known is the cops hated Rudy before 9/11 too, he came in and total trashed the way they did things, for better or worse.

[joe]

Stop your runnin' around.

(Ah, ahhhhhh, ah.)

Time you straightened right out.

(Ah, ahhhhh, ah.)

Stop your messin' around.
Creatin' problems in town.

(Ah, ahhhhhhh, ah...)

[Josh]

People forget, Guiliani's numbers were in the crapper before 9/11. Sort of like Bush's.

When you say "forget" do you mean "fail to have gullibly swallowed the same urban legend I did"?

[B.P.]

Nice job, Joe -- way to connect the dots.

[brotherben]

A Yankee is simply a quickie when you are all alone.......Oh....and I am waiting for W. to decide he can rewrite the constitution and run for a 3rd term.

[Max]

The graphic is brilliant.

[Dave]

So by the same argument, Obama is running for "President of being a well spoken black man" and Hillary wants to be "president of having a husband who was president".

I'm not a fan of Rudy's authoritarian streak, but i think we can check off the "handles a crisis situation well" box on his resume.
The guy came within minutes of being crushed under the towers, and if that's not good enough for the "why don't you send your own kids to war" line of reasoning, I don't know what is.

[joe]

Josh,

Evenn the pro-Guiliani article you link to provides a pretty bleak picture, and that's with quite a bit of cherry-picking.

[ChrisO]

Y'know, I don't support him, but a Giuliani presidency would be highly entertaining. And that's gotta count for something.

Certainly preferable to listening to Schoolmarm Hillary for 4 or 8 years. And because they both suck policywise, it's a tilt apart from entertainment value.

[joe]

The liberal blogs talk about "the incompetence dodge" - the argument that there is nothitng philosophically wrong about the Bush/Cheney/PNAC foreign policy, that it was just implemented poorly. Liberals such as myself argue that the Bush Doctrine would be a dangerous failure even if it wasn't being implemented by delusional fools.

If Guiliani is the next president, we get to have an answer to this question.