James Carroll nails it:

Could the United States actually elect as president a Yankee fan who has been rooting for the Red Sox? A father whose own children would boycott his inauguration? A husband whose first wife was his cousin and whose current wife can't remember how many times she married? Could the United States, for that matter, elect a cross-dresser? The Rudy Giuliani surge would be comic if its broader implications were not so grave.

So why is he the GOP frontrunner?

The answer is obvious. A run-of-the-mill political hack was transformed into the nation's only hero on Sept. 11, 2001. While President Bush cowered in Curtis LeMay's SAC bunker in Omaha, Giuliani was striding toward Armageddon.

For the crucial hours during and after the trauma, Giuliani provided an image of resolve and courage in which every American could glimpse a strength of character that the nation sorely needed, and for which, therefore, we were profoundly grateful. As the world's heart opened to the United States that day, Giuliani's unfeigned decency shone as a kind of beacon. Encouragement to rescuers, authority to panicked crowds, calm to television viewers, a man in charge - he was there with what was needed.

Of course he wasn't any kind of leader worthy of respect. He strode the streets to get away from the disaster center he put in the stupidest place possible to reward a wealthy landlord, and 300 firefighters died because he signed another sweetheart deal with Motorola for radios that didn't work.

But for those who are afraid of terrorists, the facts are meaningless. All that matters is a strongman who will protect them, and Rudy is perfect:

He's like a gang leader now, roving the streets, looking for some punk to bash. Iran will do. Thus, his political appeal has two components, one positive - the nobility of his instinctive performance under fire - and one negative - the bitterness of his will not so much to defend America as to avenge it. Giuliani's gritty, urban toughness seems perfectly matched to the national mood, but that's because it also carries an unmistakable, if unarticulated, edge of self-pity.

Has America lost its collective mind?

It is not that this country made too much of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks when they occurred, but that the nation has since constructed an unprecedented existential outlook around them. The United States has never regarded the broader world with more anxiety than it does now, and Giuliani is the tribune of warning. They are out there! They are coming at us! I will protect you.

A variety of unrelated or loosely related problems have been clenched into the one fist that is raised above this country now. Important distinctions have been lost, the way fingers disappear when the hand becomes a weapon.

Criminal terrorism, the threat of failing states, Islamic extremism, nuclear proliferation, the energy crunch - such challenges can be individually handled with practical strategies, but when they are clustered into an undifferentiated mass of global dangers, visceral dread trumps reason. Every aluminum pipe proves the existence of a nuclear weapons program. Immigrants threaten from every direction. Phone calls and e-mails must be monitored by an omnivorous and omniscient government.

Of course every effort by Bush and Cheney to turn the War on Terror into a never-ending "blame game" (Osama, Saddam, Ahmadinejad) has failed to eliminate terrorism.

We've also tried killing Muslims more or less indiscriminately and it doesn't work.

So what solution can Democrats offer to terrifed, non-thinking Americans who are drawn to Rudy the Protector?