The Secret Sex Fantasy of Giuliani's Guru

There are a number of reasons behind Rudy Giuliani's sinking political fortunes, but one person who may bear considerable responsibility for them is Giuliani's senior foreign policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz.

One of the founding fathers of neoconservativism, Podhoretz is a hardline Iran hawk who carefully crafted a position that is absolutely worthless for Giuliani now that the National Intelligence Estimate has taken Iran off the table as an issue for the 2008 election.

Podhoretz has also long been a vocal proponent of forging an alliance between the neocons and fundamentalists such as televangelist Pat Robertson. "In my view, Robertson's support of Israel trumps the anti-Semitic pedigree of his ideas," Podhoretz wrote more than a decade ago. But the Giuliani-Robertson alliance utterly failed to convince Republican evangelicals that the thrice-married Giuliani has a real affinity for them.

What is less well known about Podhoretz--and would likely alienate evangelicals even more--is that the godfather of neoconservatism once entertained fantasies of having a relationship with no less an icon of liberalism than Jacqueline Kennedy

As I report in my new book, The Fall of the House of Bush (for more information, go to www.craigunger.com), the episode took place after Jacqueline Kennedy moved to New York in the wake of her husband's assassination and, thanks to her friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith, was emerging from the trauma that shook the entire country and devastated her family. As Podhoretz relates in his memoir, Ex-Friends, he first met the former First Lady when Richard Goodwin, the former Kennedy aide, called and asked if he could drop by with an unnamed friend who wanted to meet Podhoretz. "Within minutes, [Goodwin] showed up at my door with a jeans-clad Jackie Kennedy in tow," Podhoretz wrote.

At the time, Jackie, still in her thirties, was the stunningly beautiful and glamorous but fragile widow of John F. Kennedy, and, arguably the most sought after woman in the world. Podhoretz, by contrast, was the sometimes witty and charming but less-than-stunningly-handsome husband of Midge Decter, lived on the less-than-fashionable Upper West Side, and, when it came to stylish attire, was given to dowdy brown suits and brown shoes. Nevertheless, according to Podhoretz, they struck an "instant rapport" and "at her initiative" had tea regularly alone in her Fifth Avenue apartment--which was enough, apparently, to put ideas in his head.

"He thought she was coming on to him and he had a terrible crush on her," says someone who knew them both. "She was just trying to make new friends," says another source with knowledge of the episode. "It was a very fragile time in her life. She wasn't looking to have an affair. She was just trying to have a normal life. But he thought she wanted one and he was telling everyone."

When Podhoretz finally cornered Jackie at a cocktail party and made his feelings known, the source says, she looked at him with an icy gaze the meaning of which was unmistakable. "Why, Mr. Podhoretz," she said. "Just who do you think you are?'"

There was no way that Jackie Kennedy was going to become Norman Podhoretz's neoconcubine.

Comments

[batguano]

You got a problem with this comment Slick?

Actually Leo Strauss is the "godfather" of the original "Neo-Con" movement, not Podhoretz.
Strauss came to America in 1937, carrying a letter of recommendation from infamous Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
Some of Strauss' students at the University of Chicago include Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork and William Kristol. http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1355 http://www.alternet.org/story/15935
Strauss taught:
1. There are two classes... the "superior" and the "inferior"­... if you are wealthy and powerful, you are a "superior"­... the rest of us are chumps and the "inferior".
2. It is up to the "superior" to use and manipulate the "inferior" with lies, religion, force or whatever it takes to PROTECT THE POWER AND WEALTH of the "superior".
3. The "superior" should profess religion, but need not believe it... because it will help control the masses.
4. Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was that "a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured.

"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and the AEI " not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power.
Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" " as Irving Kristol defined it in 1983."
We should be able to see the footprints of this warped thinking (deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses) (and Treason) in the Bush/NeoCon/Fascist Regime in power now for 7 years, especially in the new Reichstag Fire deception of 9/11 & in their use of the evangelical "Christian" Right.


PLEASE READ these pieces, they are long, but will, perhaps, open your eyes!
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EE09Ak01.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC20Ak07.html

[Ben-Simon]

Two points: A) Maybe the guy is a dope, but a failed pickup line does not render his other decisions stupid (even if they are horrible for other reasons). There are many people who have made brilliant, helpful, earth-changingly beneficial decisions and still bumbled around the opposite sex; it is pretty common.
B) This assumes that the hearsay in this repugnant story is factual, rather than gossip. It's just gossip and all it really does is cheapen the author's credentials.
C) Assuming the story is true, so what? If the author reported this story, what does that say about the level of judgment the author is rendering about the rest of his material?

[zendem1]

Podhoretz.­..sounds like a fungus.

[Gorsegrower]

Norman Podhoretz is his own mother-in-law.

[JGatsby]

I just finished reading Mr. Unger's book The Fall of the House of Bush. I recommend it to everyone reading this list. I've read several books about the Bush administration and this one is one of the best if not the best. Really does a great job of showing the interplay and history between the religious right and the neo-cons as well as analyzing Bush's relation to his father without going into pysho-babble.

[jeffbridges]

This is just a trashy post in every way. No need. We can beat their ideas without dropping to their level. Come on, man, you can do better.

[Weewinkie]

And this is relevant to what? I despise Rudy and Pod as much as the rest of you, but it's ridiculous to hold Rudy responsible for the arrested social development of one of his advisers. In the context of a discussion about Giuliani, this is just malicious gossip.

[Jane22]

Bravo, Mr. Unger! I read, "House of Bush, House of Saud" with Robert Baer's "Sleeping With the Devil". It was an excellent book for historical, factual information! You are an excellent analyst, Sir. Your new book is next on my reading list as soon as I finish Naomi Wolfe! Thanks for your contributions to the facts. Peace

[TXfemmom]

That just demonstrates that none of these neocons have any ability to see the truth until it smashes them in the face, they live in a la la land of their own creation, and they are delusional and dangerous to the rest of the world.

[ESerafina42]

However sleazy this may be, I fail to see what relevance it has. Seems like a tacky non-story to me - more like the kind of thing in which the Drudge Report would revel. I'm more concerned with his delusions of grandeur in the geopolitical realm. Who cares about his pathetic crushes from 40 years ago?

[jmundstuk]

Great read, but is that punch line credible? Somehow, I have a hard time putting those words in Jackie's mouth. Not saying it didn't happen, but a direct quote from someone who is being come onto -- where was the source standing, you have to ask. It doesn't ring true.

[CommanderWhitehead]

If Podhoretz had been a multi-billionaire at the time, she certainly would have given him serious consideration.

She was effectively a life-long world-class "power-groupie" and Mr. Podhoretz is a phallicly-­challenged dreary little old man (who lost his soul centuries ago) and who's main allegiance is to a country other than this one, make no mistake.

He is a nauseating example of how one can be a flagrant "traitor" to this nation while maintaining an active, receptive, (lucrative) following in the media.

[rjcrane]

What is destroying Rudy is that the religious right and many others are starting to learn much more about him because the media is finally reporting on him...thin­gs that most New Yorkers already knew. These new reports about Rudy are stripping away his 9/11 hero veneer - a veneer that was always thin to begin with. Voters are learning about his disaffection from his own children, what he really did and didn't do on 9/11, his ties with Bernie Kerik and Bernies' ties to the mafia, Rudy's ties with businesses that do business with bad people in the Middle East, his failed marriages and public philanderi­ng...etc. The real Rudy was just a closet full of skeletons waiting for someone to open the door and that time finally arrived. Voters are starting to realize they knew little about Rudy and what they are finding out isn't good.

While I agree that choosing Podhoretz was not a good move for many reasons, I doubt most voters being polled know anything about him or his views.

Unfortunately I wish all of this had come out after he won the GOP nomination because he would have been one of the easier candidates for any of the Dems to beat.

RJ Crane
topplebush.com

[BufoAmericanus]

Isn't that just another incidence of Neocons wishing they could be liberals, but getting "Mugged by reality" instead?

[littlepeople]

What a libido these neo-cons have! Now, if they could only find a way to use it for good instead of EVIL!!!!