I was pacing around the parking lot of a restaurant the other day, trying to get Jolie to sleep, and couldn’t help but notice the shiny new Hummer (I believe it was an H2) nearby with the “Giuliani ‘08” bumper sticker. And I got really angry, and a bit scared, because an obscenely big Hummer with a Giuliani ’08 bumper sticker is about as good a symbol as I can imagine of the very real possibility that our country, in the next election, is going to submit to its most adolescent fears and fantasies and just give up altogether on the idea of having a mature, serious democracy.
Part of it is that Giuliani, perhaps more than any other candidate, has made it clear that he’s running on the “I’ll blow those fuckers up” platform which has served us so well over the past six years.
And part of it, and this is why he frightens me more than any of the other schmoes running for the Republican nomination, is that he’s obviously enacting fantasies of toughness, retribution and omnipotence that were born out of a childhood and adolescence in which he felt powerless, humiliated and ignored.
This fact about him—that he’s a nerd—isn’t as obvious as it should be because most Americans aren’t very psychologically sophisticated. They see a guy like Giuliani acting like he thinks he’s a badass and they think, oh, well, he must be a badass, rather than actually looking at him – the chipmunk smile, the combover, the bad taste in clothes – and recognizing that his vindictiveness, his toughguy talk, his weird explosions of immaturity and exhibitionism, and his womanizing are really just what you get when the bitter, resentful, insecure nerd from junior high actually becomes the person he swore to himself that someday he was going to become — the guy who’s able to exert power over everyone else, the guy who’s going to make his enemies pay, the guy who’s going to sleep with the hot women, etc.
Giuliani is like many of the other players and power brokers in the Republican Party in this. It’s most apparent in people like Karl Rove, who still looks exactly like the snerdly guy in college you looked down on because while you were living a normal college life – having fun, studying, playing intramurals – he was obsessed with the (seemingly) zero-stakes politics of the political union and the College Republicans. But so many of them, once you look past the expensive suits and haircuts, and the polish they’ve evolved over decades in politics, present the profile.
You can look at Ralph Reed, who famously said, “I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night,” and think of him as a ruthless political operative, or you can look at him and think of a scrawny high school kid who plays paint ball and laser tag, who reads lots of adventure novels and science fiction, and who says ridiculously grandiose things like, "I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night.”
Richard Perle, "Prince of Darkness," was once the kid who got picked last to play kickball.
Grover Norquist … nerd.
Chubby little suck-up Al Gonzales .. nerd.
Revenge of the Nerds notwithstanding, most nerds, like most people, are not ennobled by their experience of being persecuted. A few of them are, but most of them (and I include myself in this category) live with the wounds of nerd persecution for the rest of our lives. We’re not better people for it; we’re damaged people, and we’re just as likely to end up wanting to emulate the thugs who once persecuted us as we are wanting to be nothing like them.
Scooter Libby’s boarding school experience, which was poignantly described by an old friend, is typical:
At Eaglebrook and then at Andover, Scooter was always a model citizen. He got excellent grades, and he participated enthusiastically in all aspects of school life. He cared whether the school teams won or lost, and he developed close, even sycophantic relationships with the teachers we had — including teachers who had about half his IQ. I remember being especially puzzled by Scooter’s high regard for one "master" (that’s what prep-school teachers were called back then) — a classic football-coach type who drilled us in marching and taught us how to salute the flag smartly. Most of the other boys in our little clique called him "Dumbo," but not Scooter. Scooter flattered him, and joked with him, and seemed genuinely to respect him.
If these guys (and a few women (I’m lookin’ at you, Condi)) weren’t running our country, it would be funny. Instead it’s scary.
Giuliani is so obviously damaged a person (and I haven’t even gotten into the details of his childhood as the son of an alcoholic small-time crook and mob functionary), and yet we still have assholes driving around in Hummers with Giuliani ’08 bumper stickers, and we still have the New York Times, which should really know better, describing him as "a commanding daddy of a candidate."
I don’t like playing the nerd card, but the risk is too great, so repeat it with me — Rudy Giuliani is a nerd. Always has been. Always will be.
