To my mind Rudy’s speech is stronger on national security than McCain. First, Rudy laid bare, in a way that McCain did not, the fundamental difference in world view between Kerry and Bush. The world view is not about acting strongly and unilaterally vs. weakly and multilaterally. It is about having a strategic mindset (acting in advance of the ’smoking gun’ to protect the U.S. against emerging threats and looking firstly for intent and capability in potential adversaries) vs. a legal mindset (waiting for evidence and past action, reasonable doubt, other concepts of juris prudence, etc). Bush – like Churchill and Reagan – thinks about national security as a strategist.

Second, Rudy did a better job (probably best to date) of proclaiming the eduring moral and strategic value of removing Saddam Hussein.