This was meant to be put up Saturday night, but travel plans got in the way…

I have now read Rudy Giuliani’s Why I’m Running speech – and, yes, I realize reading a speech gives a different impression than watching it delivered.

It’s strong. Giuliani has two recurring themes. The first is, “tested, ready, now,” and the second is that the American people “are telling us, get it done. And we will.” And Giuliani goes through his agenda – school choice, secure the border, free market solutions to health care, help hardworking Americans become exporters to the world, win the terrorists’ war on us, appoint strict constructionist judges, etc.

But it felt like a soup with a missing ingredient. And it’s not that Giuliani doesn’t talk about the messier social issues – abortion, gay rights, guns, etc. I feel like the speech was missing that ironclad argument of what he’s got that no other candidate has. Is Giuliani tested, ready, now? Sure. But I think few would argue McCain isn’t, and partisans for Thompson, Romney and Huckabee will contend that their guy is as ready. Does Giuliani get points for hearing the American people saying “get it done?” Yes, that’s nice, but every other one of the candidates would claim to hear the call to action, that’s why they’re running.

So we’re left with the agenda, and there’s not much that any Republican would disagree with; few are running on an open border, or greater government control of health care, or on raising taxes or promising to appoint judges who will legislate from the bench. Giuliani’s left to argue, “I’m the guy with the agenda, and the record of getting it done.” Maybe.

In other words, I think Giuliani needed to crisply and clearly point out what he uniquely offers in the field; what’s the one policy or characteristic that he can deliver that no other candidate in the race can offer? What do Republican voters have to vote for Giuliani in order to get?

I’m also wondering about the timing of this speech. In retrospect, Sunday was dominated by news of the newspaper endorsements, and Romney’s appearance on Meet the Press. The location, in Florida, just seemed to underline, “I need to win this state, and the latest polls show me trailing.” I kind of wonder if in a perfect world, it would have had a big, dramatic backdrop, to emphasize the themes… Do it outside the Brooklyn Museum or Lincoln Center or in the safer Times Square – “the results of my record are as tangible as the Christmas shoppers you see walking the streets”…

As another correspondent put it to me, the Giuliani argument is essentially, “either this race, and this world, require the toughest Republican in the field, or they don’t. If you think somebody else, who doesn’t have the record of fighting the mob, punks, Al Sharpton, the New York Times, dung-flinging artists of the Brooklyn Museum, Yassir Arafat when he crashes a Lincoln Center party and falling skyscrapers, can do the job, go ahead and vote for him. We’ll see if they’re tough enough.”

Finally, I’m wondering why Rudy Giuliani isn’t taking the time to just take a crowbar to Mike Huckabee over the Wayne Dumond case. That case stirs so much trepidation in the hearts of righties – was Huckabee a bit of a sucker for a hardened criminal who claimed to have found faith? Was he willing to give anybody the benefit of the doubt if they said the right words? – that it’s a big, soft target for the guy who’s associated with almost-too-tough policies on crime. And it’s not like that move would ruin Giuliani’s relationship with the religious right. He doesn’t have too much to lose in that area.