At Least Churchill Didn’t Have To Meet Him

Rudy Giuliani scored a coup in his White House campaign yesterday by meeting Gordon Brown at No 10, conferring with Tony Blair, receiving an award from Baroness Thatcher and wrapping himself in the legacy of Winston Churchill. ~The Daily Telegraph

It’s enough to make one violently ill.  We may forgive Baroness Thatcher, since she is advanced in years and has politely received other hopeless Republican candidates.  Otherwise, we have the spectacle of Giuliani meeting with two of the more loathsome politicians on the other side of the Atlantic.  For that matter, it is only in the warped world of the modern GOP that a photo-op with Tony Blair would be considered a boon. 

Update: The WSJ headline today is “Giuliani Visit to London Aims To Bolster Credentials”–how have we come to such a pass where Republican presidential hopefuls seem to feel obliged to make a pilgrimage to Britain?  How does visiting with British politicians bolster credentials?  As someone who follows British politics pretty closely, it seems to me that association with most of the people in politics could only drag a candidate down.  I have to confess that I don’t fully understand the Churchillophilia that grips so many on the right today, but admiration for Churchill has begun to change from being an annoying rhetorical tic and become almost a kind of requirement for office.  This kind of pilgrimage can only work by going Britain, since no aspiring candidate would dare visit any other country and seek the blessing of past or current political leaders.  We won’t be seeing anyone falling over himself to win Jose Maria Aznar’s approval.