History Hesitated?

Rudy Giuliani's latest ad:

When corruption ruled, he challenged it. When welfare failed, he changed it. When crime thrived, he fought it. When government broke, he fixed it. And when the world wavered. And history hesitated. He never did. Rudy Giuliani. Leadership. When it matters most.

When history hesitated? What's that supposed to mean? There's been a lot of mockery of the frequency of Rudy Giuliani's invocations of 9/11, but for my money its the vacuity of the invocations that's really striking.

Comments

My guess is that the only way Rudy becomes viable is if there is a terrorist attack between now and the Florida Primary.

The guy has won 1 delegate so far (in Nevada), the same number as Duncan Hunter.

Posted by Beau | January 20, 2008 5:33 PM

Also, he has some balls talking about corruption, given Alan Placa and Bernie Kerik.

Posted by Joe Strummer | January 20, 2008 5:39 PM

Far more troubling is the complete ignorance of common sentence structure. "And history hesitated" is not even grammatical enough to make it into a movie trailer.

In that vein, perhaps Rudy should hire that guy who voices movie trailers to do his ads (after all, Geico got him). His entire presidential campaign seems geared to the Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer fanbase anyway.

Posted by Ben | January 20, 2008 5:43 PM

When my bowels hesitated, Rudy caused me to release them.

Rudy Giuliani. The Human Laxative 2008.

Posted by WinSmith | January 20, 2008 5:44 PM

He stands behind history, yelling "Stop Hesitating and Go!"

But seriously, isn't the conservative supposed to enjoy the hesitation of history? Is that not the goal?

Posted by Neal Murray | January 20, 2008 6:08 PM

Isn't "when history hesitated" a euphemism for "when George Bush hestitated" in this case?

Posted by Al PC | January 20, 2008 6:18 PM

Clearly the "when history hesitated" line is a dog whistle for his Marxist-Leninist base. Sometime the Dialectic needs to be nudged.

Posted by njc | January 20, 2008 6:20 PM

When history hesitated, wondering WFT this Giuliani guy was talking about, because he didn't seem to be making a lick of sense, Mayor 911 never did.

Posted by rea | January 20, 2008 6:25 PM

The transcript is badly punctuated. That sentence should read, "And when the world wavered and history hesitated, he never did," so it's (roughly) parallel to the previous sentences.

But that doesn't help much, goodness knows.

Possible slight improvement: In the first four sentences, he does something; in that one, he doesn't do something. The contrast calls for "But" rather than "And."

"History hesitated" makes a vague kind of sense, given the common 9/11 observation, "This changes everything." Even if nobody else did, the Rudester somehow magically knew what was coming next, which direction history would take (i.e., that it would be safe for us all to go shopping).

Blech.

Posted by Swift Loris | January 20, 2008 6:28 PM

When water dried out, Rudy was there.
When Mountain Dew quit wiring people, Rudy was there.
When Jesus himself faltered on the Cross and quit being the Messiah, Rudy was there.

Posted by calipygian | January 20, 2008 6:34 PM

We're probably lucky he stopped where he did. Imagine if the alliteration had continued...
The world wavered, history hesitated, the solar system stuttered, deities delayed, everyone equivocated, the Vatican vacillated, humanity hovered, populations pondered...

Posted by sc | January 20, 2008 8:46 PM

Did Hal Douglas do the voiceover? (In a world, where terror was king.... One man... A renegade, robot cop....)

Posted by Jeffrey Kramer | January 20, 2008 8:49 PM

Something like the hesitation of a 73 Buick I guess.

You press down the gas long enough it goes.

But you - even more than Buick - are an agent of history, a doer, a maker.

Posted by Linus | January 20, 2008 9:08 PM

This advertisement for Rudy Giuliani is the political equivalent to the Tom Cruise scientology video. Each contains lots of vague but deep-voiced statements about how Tom/Rudy has challenged, overcome, or faced-up to things. Unfortunately, both videos are utterly vacuous and don't say a single comprehensible detail about any of the supposed achievements.

Posted by me | January 20, 2008 9:40 PM

It's Benito Giuliani's subliminal way of saying that he wants every day to be 9/11 day!

Posted by sglover | January 20, 2008 11:19 PM

Rudy who now?

Posted by Jason C. | January 21, 2008 12:34 AM

It strikes me as a slap at Bush. A reminder about who was on the ground, not flying around, hiding in Air Force One, looking completely freaked out. Instead, Rudy was there. He turned green, grew to a huge size, and released his anger on the world. Wait, that was the Hulk. He never hesitates.

Posted by JB | January 21, 2008 5:20 AM

"but for my money its the vacuity of the invocations that's really striking."

Sure Rudy's rhetoric is empty. But more to the point is something closer to home.

'but for my money its the vanity of the invocations that's really striking.'

The very worst aspect of George Bush is his insistence that you don't have to know you just have to be. Rudy is running on a platform of 'I can out cowboy George Bush'. Well some of us are tired of a guy running the world out of his gut, we really don't need a guy who is promising to run it based on what he can pull out of his colon.

Posted by Bruce Webb | January 21, 2008 10:11 AM

History hesitated when it took aWol a year and a half to invade Iraq.

Posted by Where's Sally? | January 21, 2008 1:59 PM

"Vacuity" is a good change from "inanity." Keep it up.

Posted by SqueakyRat | January 21, 2008 7:41 PM