Old Habits.(Rudy Giuliani)

Though he is not especially funny, Rudy Giuliani likes to begin with a joke. "Did you know that I'm running for President of the United States?" he asked at a recent house party in Windham, New Hampshire. "Did I tell you that?" His hosts, Al and Patti Letizio, and their friends cheered. "I'm running because I believe that the country needs strong leadership for the future."

Giuliani advised the Letizios and their neighbors to look at what he calls his Twelve Commitments. In June, also in New Hampshire, he had laid out these commitments, which range from "I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists' War on Us" (No. 1) to "I will expand America's involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world" (No. 12). Giuliani carries the list on a laminated card the size of a driver's license; he says that he will keep the card on his desk in the Oval Office.

"The goals that we have, they're big goals," he said. "They're very difficult things to do. They're very difficult things to accomplish. And they're things, quite frankly, that America in the past hasn't been able to accomplish.

"There are some people who believe that this country is declining," he went on. "There are some people who believe that we're going in the wrong direction. Well, you know something? They're wrong! And we can make them wrong, by making the right choices. By making the right choices about our leadership. Because this is about leadership."

After a while, it was time for questions. The first came from a man in a Patriots sweatshirt, which led Giuliani to muse about his own favorite team, the Giants, which in turn led the man to rib him about the Yankees. The second came from a woman who wanted to know more about Commitment No. 6, which deals with energy. How, she asked, did Giuliani plan to make the country "energy independent"?

"This is where we really need a leader," he told her. "We need somebody who can do the impossible. Now, I say that because I did this a lot in New York."

Depending on whether you count his abortive race for the U.S. Senate in 2000, this is either Giuliani's fourth or his fifth political campaign. In the earlier races, his goal was to persuade New Yorkers to vote for a Republican; this time around, it's to persuade Republicans to vote for a New Yorker. Gone are the "Godfather" imitations, the snapping at the press, and the praise for immigration ("the single most important reason for American greatness"). The candidate who stopped by the Letizios', and before that had coffee at Suzie's Diner, in Hudson, and before that went on a holiday stroll in Nashua, where he waited in line to buy a Christmas ornament of a moose, is a less ethnic, less impatient, and more conservative candidate than voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx ever knew. This Giuliani invokes Ronald Reagan, smiles--or tries to--at children, and pledges to "secure our borders and identify every non-citizen in the nation."