Brendan Miniter offers this perspective on Rudy Giuliani, as the buzz already begins to build about him. Add to it this perspective from National Review's editors.

Miniter talks about Christian conservatives being unhappy with Rudy. All right, here's a Christian conservative's perspective:

A President of the United States is not a cleric. We have no post called "Defender of the Faith" in this country. Rather, a President is a governing authority within the meaning of Romans 13:1-7. His job is to protect the people from criminals and foreign invaders, saboteurs, and murderers. Judge him, therefore, by how well he performed these functions, or functions close to them, while he was Mayor of New York.

When you do, you have to admit one thing that he does better than any other candidate out there: he commands. His command presence was obvious on September 11, and was the single most important thing that kept New York from flying into anarchy. More to the point, his decisions were the best possible under the circumstances. The NYPD and NYFD did better than anyone could possibly have expected, considering that no one had anticipated anything like what happened that day. Much of that was due to the high morale they had built up in the years that Rudy had been Mayor. But the biggest influence for law, order, and safety on that day was the spectacle of him running an operation the like of which no Mayor has ever had to run before.

That is what you want as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces in wartime--and also as the chief law-enforcement and counterintelligence officer.

Don't expect him, then, to "throw down the high places" and "throw down the altars and cut down the groves (Asherah poles) that are by them." That's the job of good old-fashioned Baptist clergy.

Rather, expect Rudy to perform the Romans 13:1-7 function. He can handle that better than any other candidate now in the race.

And that's why he gets my vote.