CRAZIANI. Giuliani's foreign policy manifesto is, as Steven says, lame. But don't sell it short, it's also very crazy! Giuliani is doubling down on hawkishness, arguing for everything from large-scale increases in military spending to the effective abolition of the UN and a retreat to an expanded NATO. This is coming in a document that the Giuliani campaign knows will be read primarily by media types, policy elites, and hardcore political junkies. That he's putting so little effort into signaling some sort of sanity to these observers is doubly unsettling. Add in that his advisers range from nuts to nuttiest (Norman Podhoretz) and the whole thing takes on a disturbing coherence. Giuliani is as unreconstructed a representative as that movement currently has in national politics, and there's no sign that any of his posturing is disingenuous. He's also a "tough guy," and so gets that heuristic credibility on national security issues from guys like Chris Matthews. It's all quite dangerous. Many liberals, for reasons I don't understand, seem to have a serene confidence that Giuliani will self-destruct, and so we need hardly worry about him. I think that's false as a predictive matter, but also misunderstands his effect, which is to help drag the whole primary to the right and force the other candidates to come up with similarly dangerous foreign policies in order to fend off Giuliani's challenge, In much the same way that Edwards has elevated the progressivism and seriousness of the Democratic candidates on social policy, Giuliani is ensuring that the Republican primary will hew close to the most discredited, extremist strain of conservative foreign policy thought. --Ezra Klein
