Rudy, Toughness, and National Survival

I was reading this post on Matt Yglesias' blog where he quotes the Corner's K-Lo in the New York Post reviewing Hugh Hewitt's book on Mitt Romeny:

Hewitt opens the book with an odd quote though: "Mr. President," Dean Acheson says in a call to Harry Truman. "The North Koreans have invaded South Korea." Hewitt writes, "It is with evenings like that one of June 24, 1950, in mind that Americans ought to cast their primary and general election votes for presidents. When devastating surprises arrive, whether on Dec. 7, 1941, Sept. 11, 2001, or any such future day - and there will be many - our country's survival depends upon the man or woman in the Oval Office."

K-Lo says that upon reading this, she thinks of Rudy; Matt thinks it's odd that conservatives automatically and unquestioningly accept this characterization of Gulianni.

I'd like to go a bit further. What about the situation described suggests that any sort of toughness was required? What Hewitt is intimating, of course, is that if a weakling like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or worse, John Kerry, was in the White House they would piss themselves and immediately sue for peace rather than perpare for war. The ridiculousness of this idea is almost beyond commentary.

We are, of course, talking about the single most powerful person in the world, commander of the world's best funded and most advanced military, and we are supposed to be afraid they won't use force because the lack the guts?

Let me ask some similarly stupid rhetorical questions. If you were superman, would you be afraid to stop an armed robber? If you were a mafia boss, surrounded by his armed enforcers, would you lack the guts to mouth off to a big scary biker?

Now, it's fair to criticize those who favor diplomacy over war on the grounds that diplomacy is the wrong course - but where the democrats actually showed weakness was in their failure to stand up to the president in the run up to war, not their inability to stomach

Hillary Clinton was asked why she thinks she can stand up to the 'evil and bad men' in the world. Aside from the fact that she's a woman (that's a joke people), why is this even in question? The question should be, "why do you think you can stand up to vastly less powerful but still evil and bad men?"

I realize why an image of toughness is an assett in inspiring people and making them feel safe, and thus very important when running for president. But the fact that people can even contemplate a US president quivering in their boots over a potential conflict with a third world country (like Iraq, or the non-nuclear North Korea of 1950), leads me to believe that Einstein was right, and human stupidity really is the only thing that is surely infinite.