Which Republican candidate is más macho?

In Iowa, McCain, Thompson and Giuliani vie for the title of Most Manly, in styles that range from low-key to aw-shucks to making glib jokes about torture.

By Walter Shapiro

Read more: Republican Party, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Politics, Iowa, News, Walter Shapiro, Fred Thompson, 2008 election

Photo: AP

Salon photo composite of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson.

Oct. 29, 2007 | DES MOINES, Iowa -- They have each faced down cancer, hired divorce lawyers, endured thinning hair as they reached the qualifying age for Social Security and compiled unorthodox résumés for big-time candidates. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson are the "macho men" (yes, the quote marks are ironic) of the Republican presidential race, and their contrasting brands of political masculinity were on display in Iowa late last week.

Presidential politics, for all the high-minded public concern about issues, is as much about emotion as it is about rational thinking. Symbolism matters, which is why Giuliani's "America's Mayor" 9/11 acclaim, McCain's agonies as a Vietnam POW and Thompson's post-Senate acting career on "Law and Order" are political virtues that could prove the difference in the still impossible-to-handicap Jan. 3 Iowa GOP caucuses.

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee may transcend this Mr. Universe competition through sheer determination as the two major candidates who have invested the most time in Iowa. But both former governors lack the star power to compete in the macho-man bake-off, unless you count as charisma a full head of dark hair and a disciplined MBA-style campaign (Romney) or a puckish sense of humor and a background as a Baptist minister (Huckabee).

With most campaigns guessing that fewer than 100,000 Republicans will turn out on a cold Thursday night for the caucuses, there is an opening for the three "macho" candidates who skipped the August Iowa Straw Poll won by Romney. In theory, Giuliani with his sidewalks-of-New-York tolerance for abortion and gays and McCain with his support for immigration reform and his long-standing opposition to ethanol subsidies are not natural Iowa candidates. Republicans in these parts tend to be social conservatives or old-school GOP loyalists, small-town insurance agents and hardware-store owners.

But Jim and Deborah Wheeler are the kind of middle-aged Rudy rooters who illustrate Giuliani's surprising appeal among otherwise conventionally conservative voters. "I think we need some backbone in the White House," explained Jim Wheeler, who works in dry-wall construction, as he and his wife waited for a late-arriving Giuliani Wednesday night at the Starlite Ballroom in Davenport. He went on to say, "Issues are No. 1 for me," while stressing that taking a militant line against illegal immigration (not Giuliani's strong suit) is imperative.

Deborah Wheeler was even more of a portrait in cognitive dissonance as she grappled with the mismatch between her firmly held views and the Giuliani record. Deborah, who works as a receptionist in an insurance agency, insisted, "As a woman, I'm tremendously against abortion." But when I started to point out that the former New York mayor supports abortion rights, she broke in to say, "Rudy is for more adoptions. He knows that we can't solve the problem by being hardcore." We went through the same routine when I turned the topic to Giuliani's three marriages. "Rudy has made mistakes -- and he's owned up to them," said Wheeler. "And as a rule, I am not a very forgiving person."

When Giuliani arrived an hour late (air traffic delays out of New York) for only his second appearance in Iowa in two months, he quickly displayed his trademark Three-Button Macho. Unlike other candidates, he did not make even the most minor concessions to Iowa-style informality, addressing the crowd of 250 without unbuttoning his dark suit or loosening his red tie or the collar of his crisp white shirt. While he would periodically flash a toothy smile and sometimes crack jokes, what Giuliani was peddling was not warmth -- and certainly not accessibility -- but his own aggressive brand of self-confidence. The Iowa version of Giuliani (more strident than the nuanced style he employs in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the GOP primary) went out of his way to blame everything except the Yankees' quick exit from the baseball playoffs on the "liberal media." In a typical applause line that won him whoops of delight, Giuliani declared, "If I can't figure out that there is a significant media bias against this war, I shouldn't be running for president."

I had interviewed the Wheelers before Giuliani made his now infamous claim that, because of inaccurate reports in the "liberal media," he was not sure whether waterboarding was torture, saying, "It depends on how it's done." (Presumably there is a difference in Rudy's mind between "smiley-faced waterboarding" and "frowny-faced waterboarding"). As part of the same rambling six-minute answer, Giuliani also joked about sleep deprivation being defined as torture by, yes, the "liberal media." As he put it with breathtaking narcissism, "They're talking about sleep deprivation. On that theory, I'm getting tortured running for president." That sleep-deprivation line got the loudest laugh of the evening from the crowd, who had nodded approvingly but did not applaud during Giuliani's discourse on waterboarding.

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