The SOB Factor (It helps Rudy)

National Review Online ^ | March 12, 2007 | John Derbyshire

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Apprised of the fact that the potato famine of 1846-7 may have killed a million Irish people, Lord Cardigan sniffed: “Not enough to do any good.”

Plainly Lord Cardigan was a son of a bitch. That’s the quality I want to talk about; but since the full expression offends the eyes of many, I’ll abbreviate that last noun phrase to the common “SOB” in what follows. Furthermore, since we don’t have what Prof. Jespersen called an “immaterial mass-word” to denote the quality of being an SOB, I’m just going to invent one pro tem: “SOBness.” And finally — before I get properly started on bloviating, I mean — since I think Lord Cardigan set the gold standard for political SOBness, I’m going to quantify that quality on a Cardigan Scale, with zero as utter and immaculate lack of SOBness, and Lord Cardigan at 100, and every other degree of SOBness having a Cardigan Coefficient (CC) somewhere in between. Now let us proceed.

A meme has been going around in political blogdom this past few days. I caught it myself as it fluttered by last week, and recorded my thoughts on a different website:

If I look at my own reasons for favoring Rudy [Giuliani], part of it is my perception that Rudy is one mean, nasty son of a bitch. I like that in a President. After all, it’s highly unlikely that the meanness and nastiness will be directed at me personally. It will, one hopes, be directed at America’s enemies; and at our corrupt, dysfunctional, and costly federal bureaucracies; and (this was sure the case during his mayoralty) at the race-guilt shakedown lobbies; and at our moronic, venal, and cowardly congresscritters; and… Why on earth would anyone want a nice guy for president?

Really, seen in this light, the only question about Rudy is, does he have enough ornery meanness and nastiness to go round? Is he a big enough son of a bitch? Perhaps there’s some kind of hormone treatment we can give Rudy, to make him even more of a pitiless, sneering, devious, wife-dumping jerk. I sure hope so.

The boss, though writing mainly about the competence factor and “executive prowess” (nice phrase, boss) the other day, made an oblique comment on Rudy’s thuggish, jerk-ish qualities:

This doesn’t mean that Giuliani will excel in the Temperament Primary. Some of the qualities that made him a successful mayor — the hunger for power, the jealousy of other centers of authority, the egocentric drive — don’t make him the most pleasant person.

And Mark Steyn, responding to some clerihews of mine on the various presidential candidates, turned out half a dozen just on the subject of presidential ruthlessness, including this on Rudy:

Rudy G
Is one tough SOB.
He’ll treat bin Laden
Like a wife he’s discardin’.

The question for discussion is: Will the SOB factor help Rudy, or hurt him?

I believe it will help. Americans have no particular objection to their chief executive being an SOB. It would be interesting to draw up a list, like one of those “best presidents” rankings that historians come up with from time to time, showing all the presidents in order by SOBness. Who’d be at the top? I should think Old Hickory has a pretty good claim, with a Cardigan Coefficient of around 70. Richard Nixon was an SOB at about the CC-80 level in foreign policy, though all too often a pussycat at home — overall CC probably about 60. Lyndon Johnson liked to brandish a big CC-90 SOB image, but wussed out on everything important. I’d give him no better than a 40. Dwight Eisenhower had a much under-appreciated SOB streak, as did Ronald Reagan (I’d put them at overall 65 and 50, respectively).

Once you start trying to quantify the SOBness of presidents, though, you realize that you may be looking at something multidimensional. There are strong reasons to believe that Jimmy Carter is an SOB in private, but he was pure mush as a chief executive — presidential CC surely less than ten. As Nixon illustrated, you can be an SOB in some policy areas but not others.

Psephologically, too, SOBness raises some problems. There is likely a big gender gap in voters’ responses to SOBness. Men, speaking very generally, are more receptive to SOBness than women. In fact, the female equivalent of an SOB, which is of course just a B, is viewed differently by women than an SOB is by men. Clarity on this point may improve greatly as the 2008 presidential campaign proceeds, since we are blessed with not only an SOB in the race, but a B too. We might even end up going into the November ’08 voting booth to face a choice between the SOB and the B, which will be very instructive.

In any case, as the public becomes more aware of his record and background, Rudy Giuliani will surely have the SOB vote in his pocket. Even Rudy’s physical appearance says “SOB!” — especially the mouth, which seems always to be trying to hold back a sneer. Rudy will need to make it plain that he’s only going to be an SOB to the right people, the ones I began listing (how could one ever finish listing them?) in my self-quoted remarks up above, but for a guy as smart as Rudy, it shouldn’t be a problem.

So far as I can judge, the country right now would be receptive to a high-CC presidential candidate. The notion of our president treating Osama bin Laden the way Rudy has treated his wives has a lot of appeal.

A great many of us seem to have had enough of the softer, feminized, kumbaya approach to matters both domestic and foreign. Our well-intentioned efforts to do good in various spheres — to Arabs (Operation Iraqi Freedom), to unacademic kids (No Child Left Behind), to poor Central Americans (you’re not “illegal,” only “undocumented”!) — have left us with a bunch of messes to be cleaned up. While we get down to it with the mops and shovels, perhaps we’d prefer to have the federal power in the hands of a person who fits the self-description offered in the USMC version of the 23rd Psalm:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil:
For I am the meanest SOB in the valley.

[atomicpossum]

The question for discussion is: Will the SOB factor help Rudy, or hurt him?

Truthfully, I think it's his one beneficial trait.

[Steel Wolf]

Upon some reflection, I think this is why I like Rudy. He's a SOB, and I'm tired of President Bush's nice guy/pushover routine. I think most people are, too, which explains Rudy's appeal. Once you admit that he's an SOB, but that's what you want, then it's easier to overlook his negatives. It's because he's a negative force that I want unleashed on my enemies.

At any rate, I've said my piece. Cue the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth.

[stockpirate]

"I'm tired of President Bush's nice guy/pushover routine."

What makes you think it is a routine?

I think ihe is a pushover. Look at the drug bill.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A quote I spotted in a GEORGE WILL piece: ***......Suppose someone seeking the presidential nomination had, as a governor, signed the largest tax increase in his state's history and the nation's most permissive abortion law. And by signing a law institutionalizing no-fault divorce, he had unwittingly but substantially advanced an idea central to the campaign for same-sex marriages -- the minimalist understanding of marriage as merely a contract between consenting adults to be entered into or dissolved as it suits their happiness.

Question: Is it not likely that such a presidential aspirant would be derided by some of today's fastidious conservatives? A sobering thought, that, because the attributes just described were those of Ronald Reagan....****

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/opinion/16881853.htm

[trisham]

Comparing Giuliani to Reagan is an insult to Reagan.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Reagan had three big thoughts (objectives):

Fight communism


Free market principles for the economy


Reduce the size of government


He accepted that he got two out of three because he felt they were the most important.


Guiliani wants free markets, school choice, smaller government, national security and questions the environmentalist movement.

I'd like to see him get 2/3rds of his agenda.

[trisham]

I'd like to see him reelected as mayor of NYC.

[Miss Didi]

My sentiments exactly, Wolf. Enough already with the Mr. Nice Guy, let's all get along, hands across the aisle kumbaya! The Dems want to get us killed. I want someone to stand up to them, as well as the terrorists.

[jwparkerjr]

Rudy IS like Reagan in that both stand up to their enemies rather than find nice things to say about them. I have said here before that the press was unfair to Reagan too, but rather than slink back into the Oval Office and think up nice things to do for the liberals to prove them wrong he simply ignored them and went on the next thing they didn't like. It was like he had a list of things he knew would yank their chains and when they messed with him he would take out his list and use the top two items to mess back.

We began to lose the battle when the Republican majority after the conservative revolution would not respond to the lies and spin being used against them. Their policy was that the truth would speak for itself and responding to the barbs only gave them a wider audience. That's not the case, and we know that now. There's about one third of the electorate anxious and willing to believe any lie or spin that supports their hate for the conservative cause. Not having a team to counter the lies and spins as quickly and vociferously as possible gives a aire of truth to the charges. The little things add up and before long you find yourself where we are now.

I agree that Rudy is no Reagan, but they are similar in some respects.

[Little Ray]

Ditto.

As I said before, I'll vote for him if runs as War Leader and a Government Reformer (but under NO other circumstancts). To do this he'll need to ooze and slosh "SOBness".
So far, he isn't doing it, though.

[ken5050]

I'm not sure if it will be a factor at all. There's another old adage which I think is more appropriate..

Yes, he's an S.O.B, but he's OUR S.O.B.!"

[dforest]

Nope. "Its like deja vu all over again"

We need to get over Rudy. This party is setting itself up all over again for a 2006 replay. Clever on the part of the Dems. If something works , why fix it?, strategy.

We lose in 2006, more about the Foley kerfuffal, than anything else. After the elections, the RATs get rolling quickly for 2008. Puts us in a hurry.

We are fed polls that Rudy is the guy. It is already causing a major division and argument in the party. Many people do not know the Rudy history, especially people who spend little time on politics, they only think of 9-11.

We put Rudy up, the MSMs and the Dems will make the most ugly facts about Rudy ever more ugly.

The MSMs are too quiet at this time on Rudy and his history, they are...waiting.

We will have a Foley scandal of POTUS size proportions. In sail the RATs with relative ease.

End of story.

[LS]

I agree, and I think when I talk to Ohio conservatives who are grudgingly backing Rudy, they are doing so because they want a FIGHTER, they want someone who will kick butt in the WoT and who will fight the Dems on at least SOME issues without the "new tone."

[longtermmemmory]

another National Review puff piece.

Guiliani is just having his buds write warm and fuzzy pieces.

Just because a MSM buddy writes him as an SOB does not make him less of an anti-second amendment, pro-homosexual marriage, typical lawyer politician.

[Beckwith]

Apprised of the fact that the potato famine of 1846-7 may have killed a million Irish people, Lord Cardigan sniffed: “Not enough to do any good.”

Cecil Woodham-Smith, considered the preeminent authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that, "...no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation."

According to John Mitchel, quoted by Woodham-Smith, "Ireland was actually producing sufficient food, wool and flax, to feed and clothe not nine but eighteen millions of people," yet a ship sailing into an Irish port during the famine years with a cargo of grain was "sure to meet six ships sailing out with a similar cargo."

In Ireland Before and After the Famine, author Cormac O’Grada documents that in 1845, a famine year in Ireland, 3,251,907 quarters (8 bushels = 1 quarter)) of corn were exported from Ireland to Britain. That same year, 257,257 sheep were exported to Britain. In 1846, another famine year, 480,827 swine, and 186,483 oxen were exported to Britain. The average monthly export of food from Ireland was worth 100,000 Pound Sterling — almost throughout the five-year famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food.

While Irish peasants met severe misfortune, landowners — most of whom were Anglican — continued to prosper.

[freedomfiter2]

Almost anyone can act like an obnoxious jerk, the trick is in knowing when that's appropriate. Bush thinks it never is and Rudy thinks that's always the way to go.