Conducted by Maggie Goodlander 

Rudolph W. Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 until 2001. After leaving office he founded Giuliani Partners, a security consulting business, and became partner in the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani. A former U.S. attorney, he is currently a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. If elected, he would be the first mayor elected president without having held a higher office. (Photo by John Brian Silverio) 

I had the chance to talk with Mayor Giuliani during one of his trips to my home state, New Hampshire. I boarded the “JOIN RUDY 2008” bus on a sweltering August afternoon where “America’s Mayor” sat cross-legged in an overstuffed armchair that had seated George W. Bush four years before while he campaigned for reelection in the Granite State. Mayor Guiliani first praised Charles Hill, his senior foreign policy advisor and diplomat-in-residence and lecturer in International Studies at Yale, before I started in with my first question:

You’ve promised to keep America on offense as we confront terrorism and the Iraq war. You also acknowledge in your “12 Commitments,”—the priorities of your campaign platform—that we are fighting a war of ideas—a war for the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East and beyond. As president, are there any significant foreign policy changes in the war in Iraq or the war on terrorism that you would implement to restore America’s moral authority and influence abroad?

The most important thing for America to do is have a principled foreign policy—to articulate what we’re trying to achieve and stick to it. And what we’re trying to achieve is peace and an end to terrorism. This isn’t a war that we selected; this is a war that’s being conducted against us by the terrorists. So we have to first explain why we’re on offense. We’re on offense because there are groups of people in this world that are organized around the idea of wanting to kill us. When that ceases, it will all be over. We don’t want to extend it any further than being on offense to properly protect ourselves.What I would also do as president is try to reform the State Department to be much more proactive about defending the reputation of the United States. Explaining why America has to take the action that it takes to protect itself and a lot of the rest of the world and the wonderful things about America that most people know anyway. There’s a strange contradiction in the world: people say that America’s reputation is under attack, yet more people want to come to America than any other country in the world. In the very countries where they complain about America, great numbers of people want to come to the United States, so maybe what we have to do is square perception with reality and do a much better job explaining America to combat anti-Americanism. We shouldn’t just accept it. An ambassador in a foreign country where America is being attacked has an obligation to go out and speak and explain what the truth is. A lot of these attacks are not truthful.

So the State Department will act as the primary vessel for improving America’s reputation abroad?

Yes. A very large mission of the State Department should be expanding and protecting the reputation of the United States.

Regarding judicial appointments, you said you would appoint a strict constructionist judge to the Supreme Court if given the chance as president. Historically, which U.S. Supreme Court justice most closely conforms to your ideal?
 
Very interesting. I think on the current court I would have appointed John Roberts very easily. I know John very well, and I have a lot of respect for him. I could have just as easily appointed Sam Alito, although I don’t know him as well.

Is there anyone not on the current court who comes to mind?

I probably would have made Justice Scalia chief justice because he has been on the court longer, and I would have made John Roberts an associate justice, but I can see why President Bush did what he did—John Roberts is younger and may have a longer time to serve. I admire Justice Thomas, and I admire Justice Kennedy, too. But I think the four that would best conform to the type of justice I would appoint are the first four that I mentioned—Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas.

In light of its upcoming reauthorization, what specific changes, if any, would you make to the No Child Left Behind Act as president?

I would try to create incentives for school choice because I think that public education in America needs to move the focus of evaluation of standards to the parents and give parents power to evaluate schools. The best way to give parents the power to evaluate schools is to give parents choice—let them select the school that their children go to. If they don’t have enough money to put their child in a school that they want to put their child in, we should turn over the money and let them spend it on the school of their choice—in a public school or a charter school or a private school or a parochial school. The idea that a bureaucrat in Washington or at the state capitol or at the board of education knows better about where to put a child than does a parent is a mistake. By and large, the parent knows best.

As president, what would be your China policy? In your view, is China a threat or an ally and trading partner?

I see China as a mixed bag. I see a lot of positive things, but I also see a lot of things to be cautious about. If you ask me about the United Kingdom or Israel, I’d say that there we have a trusted, long-term ally and good friend. If you ask me about Iran, I’d say there you have a country that embraces and sponsors terrorism, and I’d put them on the other end of the spectrum. If you ask me about a country like China, I’d say there’s a good part and a bad part. There’s rising economic freedom, an embracing of capitalism, and China is engaging the world. That’s all very good. We should engage in business with them. We should do commerce with them. However, they are not embracing as fast as they should political freedom, political rights, or rule of law. There you’ve got to be careful that the progress doesn’t turn back in a negative direction. We need to put pressure on them to eventually have the same sort of progress in their political and legal systems that they’re having in their economic system.So there is no one policy toward China; you almost have to have two policies. We need to encourage and engage them in the areas in which they are growing and put pressure on them in the areas in which they’re not growing and try to find ways for other countries to put appropriate pressure on them to move in the right direction.

I’d say that Russia is also in that situation. Yet in the case of Russia, they’ve actually taken steps backward. Russia has a whole area where they’re engaged with the rest of the world, a whole area where they’ve grown, and a whole area that’s very prominent. However, Russia has taken steps backward in terms of trying to put inappropriate pressure on other parts of the world by using energy. It looks like imprisoning people at home and at least being suspected of several inappropriate activities abroad. We have to be very careful with Russia. We have to engage them, but we have to be careful and more than willing to speak honestly with them about the inadequacies and the steps they’ve taken backward.

Senator Barack Obama vowed he would deploy troops into the tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan if the need arose. What is your position on deploying troops in Pakistan?

I’m not sure exactly what Senator Obama said because he’s given several versions of what he said, but I’ll you what I think since I can’t quite interpret what he said. I think we should do everything we can to engage Pakistan in wiping out the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and making sure that they don’t return. We should engage Pakistan as best we can in trying to catch Bin Laden and his colleagues. I think the question that Senator Obama posed was if the only opportunity were action by the United States, would we act? I would say we would leave that option on the table. I don’t know that we’d threaten to do that, but I think we’d leave it on the table. My preference would be giving a decision that we would act with the permission of the Pakistani government. In the past, we’ve been able to get the permission of Musharraf and the Pakistani government to act. I feel confident that I could get permission of the Pakistani government to act if I felt it was in the best interest of the United States to do that. If they didn’t give you the permission, you’d have to make your decision as to how important it was, what chance of success there was, but you should leave the option of the table. You shouldn’t just brush it off. Because there’s a lot of dispute about just how far Pakistan has gone is helping us to destroy Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and making sure that they don’t return. Keeping pressure on Musharraf is the appropriate thing to do.

In the seemingly likely event that President Musharraf is not reelected, how will your strategy change?

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