The substance thing

Marc Santora's reporting continues to marvel. Today's headline for his insightful political analysis was Giuliani, Substance Firm, Struggles to Secure Style, and it's a doozy. I mean, you're probably thinking, "Substance? Has Giuliani actually said anything that held more than a thimble full of 'substance." But according to Santora, you'd be wrong, for instance,

The lights were low, the music soft and soothing, a lute was being plucked in the background. The next song, presumably meant to liven up the crowd, was a selection from Yo-Yo Ma.

A sign with the featured speaker’s name was bathed in blue.

A motivational guru? Or perhaps some Jerry Brown-liberal type?

Nope.

As the “Rudy” signs made clear, the room in Savannah, Ga., was packed with Republicans eager to hear Mr. Tough-on-Terror himself, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The ideological base of Mr. Giuliani’s campaign for president has, by now, come into fairly sharp relief: terrorism and small government. But the stylistic side — the way he interacts with voters and presents himself at rallies, the music he uses to announce his entrances — seems to be a work in progress as he tries to balance his New York persona with his heartland campaign.

"Terrorism and small government" represent meaningful "substance" for this stooge.

And that's it. That's the extent of Giuliani's "substance."

Mr. Giuliani, an avid opera fan, said he would keep arias out of his campaign repertoire.

“I don’t think the crowds are ready for me to pick out who is singing ‘Nessun dorma,’ whether it is Plácido Domingo or Luciano Pavarotti,” he said recently in an interview in Sioux City, Iowa. “But I can do it. It is one of the things I can do.”

Yes, that was written in the pages of The New York Times.

No matter where he is, he says he tries to start each day with 15 to 20 minutes of sit-ups and then a cup of coffee. Munching red grapes from a big bowl, he said he tried to eat three healthy meals a day, adding that the campaign had not yet done any damage to his waistline.

Everywhere he goes, Mr. Giuliani has a duffel bag stuffed with books, said Anthony V. Carbonetti, his campaign manager. He does not read them one at a time, but rather fleetingly dips into several books at once. He sprinkles his stump speeches with references to what is on his bedside table, mentioning books on subjects as varied as Islam in America and Nascar, a world he is just getting to know by political necessity.

At the end of the day, Mr. Giuliani will often indulge in a cigar, which can sometimes be spotted in his shirt pocket as evening draws near.

That's to make sure you didn't think the lute music, ya know, makes him a pussy. Even a man's man can sing arias, dammit! And he reads randomly from books!

Oh, wait. I wrote too soon. We're gonna get a Q&A with the voters. Surely we'll get some...thought stuff, or something... from the candidate now.

Still, the rituals of the campaign trail are not always a natural fit for Mr. Giuliani. For instance, he does not do the soft and cuddly thing very well.

Jill Martin, a teacher from Le Mars, Iowa, her child in her arms, was becoming emotional as she told the candidate how she could not afford the rate increases on her health insurance.

“What are you going to do to make health care possible for people like me and my children?” Ms. Martin asked, her voice cracking.

Mr. Giuliani extended one arm in her direction, not to offer support but to beckon her to be seated.

He did not utter any of the soothing words that can come so easily to a Clinton or a Romney.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Giuliani said brusquely. “I don’t know the answer in your particular circumstance how you are going to afford it.”

He can also react harshly when interacting with voters he thinks are not asking smart questions.

In Laconia, N.H., when a young man asked him if he thought that terrorism sprang from some sense of “desperation” among Muslims around the world, Mr. Giuliani snapped that such wrong thinking was probably the result of a “liberal education.” He softened his response a bit as he held forth on the subject, but his gut reaction was so cutting that the crowd let out a collective nervous laugh.

Oh.

Maybe this is more of that "post-modern" reporting from the Times. Indicate that you're covering the candidate's "substance," than show quite clearly he has none?