Rudy's run.(2008)(Rudy Giuliani)

RUDY GIULIANI is a compelling candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. He saved New York City, by restoring law and order and breaking with the disastrous urban liberalism of the 1970s. He will forever be honored for his leadership after the 9/11 attacks. And his effective, no-nonsense management style and straight-talking persona are enormously appealing. Our colleague John Podhoretz is correct when he points out that conservatives want to like Giuliani, and we would add that there is a lot to like.

But there are serious obstacles to Giuliani's winning the embrace of conservatives. Putting aside his tumultuous personal life, his positions on many national issues, from tax reform to the environment, are largely unknown and will be more closely examined. On social issues, however, his liberal views are well known and so present a threshold question for many conservatives. Giuliani's most important flaw in this regard is his denial that unborn children have a right to life.

We are glad to see that Giuliani is now reaching out to conservatives on these issues. Pro-lifers have been willing to overlook politicians' pasts and embrace their conversions: It is never too late to begin protecting life. In other cases, pro-lifers have reached a modus vivendi with politicians who continue to disagree with them. The late senator Paul Coverdell, for example, supported legal abortion. But once he won his primary, pro-lifers supported him because he promised to vote to ban partial-birth abortion, oppose public funding of abortion, and support conservative nominees to the judiciary. He lived up to those promises. He stayed theoretically pro-choice, but was operationally pro-life. The bar for Giuliani will be higher, since he is running for president--and so far he has done less.

He has moved on partial-birth abortion. On Meet the Press in 2000, he said he would "vote to preserve the option for women." He also said, "I think the better thing for America to do is to leave that choice to the woman, because it affects her probably more than anyone else." Partial-birth abortion is inches away from infanticide, and more than 60 percent of Americans--including many people who consider themselves "pro-choice"--think it is abhorrent and should be prohibited.

Giuliani has now joined this consensus, which is the bare minimum a presidential candidate who wants to find common ground with pro-lifers must do. Now Giuliani says that he supports a ban on partial-birth abortion, so long as the procedure can be employed to save the mother's life. The qualification is puzzling, there being no cases in which a woman's life or even health would depend on partly delivering her child and then crushing the child's skull and sucking out the brains. But we applaud the mayor's newfound willingness to endorse a ban at all.

Giuliani also says he would look for "strict constructionists" in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to fill judicial vacancies. Those who believe that judges should be bound by the Constitution and not free to impose their own policy preferences by fiat will applaud. Social conservatives have particular reason to cheer. Roe v. Wade was a foundational act of judicial activism that made it impossible to have any meaningful restrictions on abortion, and the courtroom remains the preferred governmental venue for social liberals seeking to overcome what they regard as the retrograde moral views of the people.

Giuliani surely hopes that social conservatives will think he is promising, sotto voce, to appoint justices who oppose Roe v. Wade. President Bush sent that signal in code. But code won't be enough for Giuliani. He needs to be up-front about his views on Roe. Instead he has dodged the ...