One-dimensional Rudy wasn’t all that bad

Chris Urago, Las Vegas

Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Maureen Dowd’s Tuesday essay on Rudy Giuliani’s sputtering presidential campaign was not so much prophetic as it was sad. We saw the signs coming.

Poor Johnny One-Note. Dowd says Rudy’s campaign was one-dimensional, implying that most of us are wanting two or three in the dimension area. This has left Rudy in the twilight zone. Accordingly, he has since dropped out.

But Dowd was descriptively right; the tale of Rudy is ending sadly, at least for a presidential candidate. It seems it was the closing act in a simple tableau of the not-too-distant past.

I may be going four-dimensional, but I suggest that Rudy was not that poor a candidate. He may be good at tackling one task at a time. Heaven knows we need clearer pathways toward problem-solving.

A former mayor of the biggest city in America can’t be ineffectual. And as far as family values are concerned, how bad could he be? We already know about his checkered past, so even as a secretive man, he can’t hide the blemishes.

He said he is always willing to admit his mistakes and try again, like a good Catholic will, to make amends. This might have been good for a country that wants change, since change seems to rumble forward from a checkered past.

We are not a perfect family in this great country, even if we do have values. It is not easy to find a nonsecretive, nonpunitive professional to head a one-, two- or three-dimensional family.

Perhaps we do need to move on from overprotective parenting, but I remember the old school of strong, silent types who could call up the fear of dare I say it? God, and take a crisis by the horns and put a redress on it.

Rudy may have sputtered and withdrawn, but I sense that like an old soldier, he is not about to fade away.