Given that Fred Thompson's campaign is a dud, Rudy Giuliani has to be considered a marginal favorite for the Republican presidential nomination.

The main theme of Giuliani's day to day tactics is to establish that he's the ubermacho guy in the Republican sense of the word. That means that Giuliani is working to project an aura of dominating the space around him--meeting each issue with a studied show of aggresive "will," formulating every disagreement as an ideological confrontation, and refusing to bend to either friends or enemies. Giuliani's daily put-downs of Hillary Clinton--today Giuliani was after Hillary both for refusing to be pinned down on a position and being wrong about everything at the same time-- aren't just playing to the Republican base in terms of blasting their least-loved Democrat, it's about establishing domination over Hillary's political persona. The same is the case with Giuliani's threats to attack Iran, his attacks on European health care systems, and his defense of torture.

The point of all this manuevering isn't the right health policy or American national security. The point is to create a theater of daily aggression.

Of course, George Bush and Dick Cheney tried to accomplish the same thing, failed miserably, and paved the way for a Democratic victory in 2006. But Rudy is portraying himself as a more manly man the current administration. Where Bush was a failed oilman, Rudy Giuliani was a spectacularly successful prosecutor. Where Bush can't speak English without looking stupid, Rudy Giuliani is coherent and informed while talking on the fly. Where George Bush is studied in his ignorance, Rudy Giuliani reads magazines like City Journal in New York. Giuliani's spokesperson drove home the difference between Rudy and Bush in relation to Rudy's reading about health care issues.

The citation is an article in a highly respected intellectual journal written by an expert at a highly respected think tank which the mayor read because he is an intellectually engaged human being."

Even Bush's mother wouldn't say that about the president. In this sense, Rudy Giuliani is promising Republicans that he'll not only be the tough-talking macho kind of guy they want, but that he'll also be smart enough and competent enough to make conservatism work.

Of course, nobody's that smart.