READ HIS LISP. Giuliani's 9/11 message, and his recent invocations of Reagan, having failed to move the needle, he shifts to a classic Republican Presidential gambit, and in a big way: from his first day in office, his new ad promises, he'll "cut taxes by trillions of dollars." The ad claims that as mayor Giuliani "delivered more tax relief than all the other Republicans combined" and adds he's "gotten it done where it was even more difficult to do it than in Washington" -- that is, in the liberal hellhole New York City.

Giuliani's cuts (disputedly totaling $9 billion) mostly took place during an economic boom. His first and most successfully-slashed budget was $31.6 billion, and in his last post-boom days in office before the 9/11 attacks, he expected to leave a deficit of $2.8 billion (the WTC fallout stuck a few more billion on it). Giuliani's tax-cutting career seems to follow a national pattern for the era of big deals at the top, fudging in the middle, and a mess at the end.

The "trillions" in cuts he now proposes are still pretty fudgy: the Giuliani campaign includes "making the current tax provisions... permanent," "the expansion of tax-free savings accounts [which] will encourage Americans to save and eliminate the double taxation of individuals’ current savings," and exemptions that pertain to his health-care plan.

This seems a very old-fashioned Republican gambit, but the non-traditional campaign Giuliani's been running has demonstrably failed to work. I guess his operatives are moving Giuliani's old themes -- 9/11 and his peculiar mix of progressive and authoritarian social policies -- into the subtext. He will be the guy who is tough on terror, tough on goddamn New York, tough on ex-wives, tough on anyone who stands in his way -- and tough enough to cut your taxes by trillions! Whether this works may depend on how much voters surmise he'll also, when circumstances require, be tough on them.