David notes how many Republicans are appalled by Rudy Giuliani’s weird little wife-phone-stunt thing. The larger story is how many on the right are appalled by Giuliani’s wife in general. Take this rather stunning attack at the Corner from the National Review’s Lisa Schiffren:
The albatross around Giuliani’s neck at the moment is his third wife, Judith. (John Fund’s column in the WSJ today is great on the cell phone/rudeness problem.) Perhaps we should be wondering why he takes those cell phone calls. Is he trying to show that the relationship is strong and loving? Why would we question that? Is she really angry at him, such that he needs to placate her — or — what? She will leave? She will reveal something? Why is she so clingy and insecure? Is that her personality? (And why didn’t he see it before he married her?) Or does she have cause?
The problem with being a thrice-married man, whose children don’t speak to him, who wants the American people to trust his judgment, is that there is no wiggle room on the personal behavior front. Not one inch. Judith is a liability and a half. She is vulgar, uneducated, grasping and insecure — and has failed to keep those attributes hidden. She offends major donors right and left by being rude — especially to their wives, especially the attractive wives. It is hard to imagine the kind of graciousness and equanimity that we like to see in First Ladies emerging from her little bag of tricks.
The real problem for Rudy in all of this is that it means conservatives dislike his family in a very familiar way — to use Schiffren’s words, they’re wary of a return to “Clintonesque psychodrama.” Now, the psychosis was mostly on the right during the Clinton years, but that’s precisely the issue. Conservatives seem predisposed to hate political wives who don’t fit squarely into the square hole marked out for the role. Judith Nathan, for better or for worse, does not. And she, not Rudy’s abortion position, could wind up being his most difficult “social issue” of all.
Something to say?
