Giuliani's Neocon Guru Was Hot for Jackie O

There are a number of reasons behind Rudy Giuliani's sinking political fortunes, but one person who may bear considerable responsibility for them is Giuliani's senior foreign policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz.

One of the founding fathers of neoconservativism, Podhoretz is a hardline Iran hawk who carefully crafted a position that is absolutely worthless for Giuliani now that the National Intelligence Estimate has taken Iran off the table as an issue for the 2008 election.

Podhoretz has also long been a vocal proponent of forging an alliance between the neocons and fundamentalists such as televangelist Pat Robertson. "In my view, Robertson's support of Israel trumps the anti-Semitic pedigree of his ideas," Podhoretz wrote more than a decade ago. But the Giuliani-Robertson alliance utterly failed to convince Republican evangelicals that the thrice-married Giuliani has a real affinity for them.

What is less well known about Podhoretz--and would likely alienate evangelicals even more--is that the godfather of neoconservatism once entertained fantasies of having a relationship with no less an icon of liberalism than Jacqueline Kennedy

As I report in my new book, The Fall of the House of Bush (for more information, go to www.craigunger.com), the episode took place after Jacqueline Kennedy moved to New York in the wake of her husband's assassination and, thanks to her friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith, was emerging from the trauma that shook the entire country and devastated her family. As Podhoretz relates in his memoir, Ex-Friends, he first met the former First Lady when Richard Goodwin, the former Kennedy aide, called and asked if he could drop by with an unnamed friend who wanted to meet Podhoretz. "Within minutes, [Goodwin] showed up at my door with a jeans-clad Jackie Kennedy in tow," Podhoretz wrote.

At the time, Jackie, still in her thirties, was the stunningly beautiful and glamorous but fragile widow of John F. Kennedy, and, arguably the most sought after woman in the world. Podhoretz, by contrast, was the sometimes witty and charming but less-than-stunningly-handsome husband of Midge Decter, lived on the less-than-fashionable Upper West Side, and, when it came to stylish attire, was given to dowdy brown suits and brown shoes. Nevertheless, according to Podhoretz, they struck an "instant rapport" and "at her initiative" had tea regularly alone in her Fifth Avenue apartment--which was enough, apparently, to put ideas in his head.