Then again, he might not be thrilled to see his old essays excavated for public review. The opinions that once appeared under the byline of Rudy Giuliani on matters of politics and public policy have evolved quite perceptibly. His emphatic endorsement of Robert Kennedy's carpetbagging (which he regarded as a boon to New York State) is not the only notion he has revised substantially since then.

Of course it would be "ridiculous," as Mr. Giuliani himself might say, to hold him accountable for the ideas he expressed 35 years ago-at least as unfair as mocking Hillary Rodham Clinton for her long-forgotten student radicalism of the same era. And yet some of what he wrote back then resonates today.

In a bitter assault on Sen. Kenneth Keating, for instance, Mr. Giuliani denounced the Republican incumbent's efforts to frighten Jewish voters into rejecting Kennedy: "If one could add up all the times Sen. Keating has either mentioned … his love for Israel, or the many bar mitzvahs he has attended, it would outweigh all the other things or issues he has raised throughout this campaign. Sen. Keating is desperately trying to patronize the Jewish people … Certainly, all of us have a stake in the protection of our firmest ally in the Middle East, but we do not go around wearing an 'I Love Israel' button. Let us hope the Jewish people, who have always been noted for their good common sense and their civic dedication, can see through this sham."

(This high-minded perspective on ethnic and religious pandering has been inoperative for about a decade. The Mayor's own foreign policy is well to the Zionist right of the incoming government of Israel. His favorite button is one that says "I Love Israel More Than You Do.")

The young Rudy had little sympathy for the extremists who took over the Republican Party in 1964 with the nomination of Barry Goldwater, whom he considered a right-wing "patsy," a sycophant of the John Birch Society and "an incompetent, confused and sometimes idiotic man." After the election, the Quadrangle analyst continued to roast "the Goldwater people … [who] succeeded in inflicting a tremendous defeat on the Republican Party. Now, these same people who have come very close to destroying the party founded in 1854 seem to think they have some right to hold onto the leadership of the Republican Party."

(Those silly Goldwater people did more than hold on. Rudy liked them better after they captured the White House with Ronald Reagan, and suddenly had jobs to fill in the Justice Department.)

He didn't have much sympathy for conservatism in any form. In fact, he personally doubted that the American electorate would ever accept the "so-called 'conservative' philosophy of government," with all its "erratic" and potentially "dangerous" prescriptions.

(Perhaps next year he will tell the inspiring story of his own rightward odyssey, as he tries to convince Republicans and Conservatives that he should be their Senator. Conservative Party leaders may pose hard questions, however, about all the city patronage he has provided to the Liberal Party-a matter that tends to concern them more than mere ideology.)

He gave astringent advice to the vanquished Republicans, whom he felt must "adequately address themselves to the problems of discrimination, of poverty, of education, of public housing and the many more problems that Senator Goldwater and Company throw aside in the name of small laissez-faire government … Strong, large government is necessary to deal with industries that are national and international and with problems that cities and states have ignored …"

(Notice that he embraced "large" rather than "big" government. Perhaps he was just a premature New Democrat.)

He mocked the complaints of the Goldwaterites about the "misinterpretation" of their candidate's position on race by the "Eastern Establishment Pinko Com-symp Press," notorious for being "bleeding hearts and do-gooders in the area of civil rights."

(In those days, when excessive police violence made headlines mostly in the Deep South, he still admired civil rights activists and crusading journalists. This was long before he encountered the Rev. Al Sharpton and the New York Civil Liberties Union's Norman Siegel-not to mention those bleeding hearts in City Hall's press room.)

His early idealism about proper political conduct remains quite touching. Of Keating's harsh attacks on Kennedy's character, Rudy Giuliani wrote: "Personality attacks have no place in an election unless they can be documented. Any candidate using such a base tactic only proves his own inadequacy to serve in the position he desires."

(What a nice young man.)

The prevailing wisdom is that Mrs. Clinton is leaning toward a Senate run in New York, though she must be wary of the potential political pitfalls. Her quandary is eerily reminiscent of the one Robert F. Kennedy faced in 1964. The pros and cons of her choice now are so similar to his then, it is likely that her conclusion may be suggested by Kennedy's decision. She should ponder the relevance of R.F.K.'s experience; it was one of exhilarating opportunities but also of punishing pressures and inhuman demands.

Future historians will note that, then as now, pervasive media speculation abounded. Both were national political stars whose careers had been advanced by their special relations with a related President-hers with her husband, his with his brother. Mrs. Clinton became a national figure as an outspoken First Lady; Robert F. Kennedy was an extraordinarily active attorney general-and both were key figures in their relation's Presidential campaigns.

Both considered a Senate race in New York, a state they had not been associated with, but one providing a unique national platform for their unusually visible and influential careers. Both faced charges they were carpetbaggers, using New York's Senate seat as a selfish stepping stone. At least Robert F. Kennedy had lived in Bronxville as a child-a surprise circumstance we exploited in our campaign public relations; Mrs. Clinton doesn't have even that hint of a connection. Both faced powerful opponents: Kenneth Keating was a popular incumbent and Mayor Giuliani is a daunting campaigner who also has a reputation beyond New York City and national aspirations of his own.

Each candidate-Mrs. Clinton and Kennedy-generated extraordinary adulation, but also engendered shocking vituperation, among the public in and out of New York. Something about both of them provokes a fearful, passionate reaction, puzzlingly outsize emotions disproportionate to the issues they espouse or represent. They are adored or despised, there is no middle ground.

I recall strategy sessions leading to Kennedy's decision to run, which must be very much like those the First Lady must be having with her advisers. What is there to gain by a consuming and critical campaign? Both had attractive and lucrative opportunities aside from the Senate. Both would face ugly charges and a bruising political fight. Both would run on their own records but bear the burdens as well as the glamour of their Presidential mentors. Both were more liberal than their Presidential relations and, while they came to power under more conservative mentors, would find appealing the opportunity to make profound footprints of their own. Both faced critics' concerns about the undesirability of family dynasties.

Kennedy agonized for months, then decided to run in part as a route out of his prolonged agonies over his brother's assassination. One can speculate that Mrs. Clinton, too, sees this opportunity as a way to walk out from under the darkness which was cast on her by the clouds of her husband's troubles throughout his Presidency, especially during the last year.

Eventually, of course, Kennedy decided to run, and won his election. But it was a rough and contentious one. Many New York liberals distrusted him and supported a Democrats for Keating organization. Like Mrs. Clinton, Kennedy was charismatic, but was deemed to be too self-absorbed, too ruthless and without personal schmaltz to suit many New Yorkers. (It's hard to imagine the First Lady sitting with Spike Lee at a Knicks game.) He was reviled for his earlier excesses-or what were viewed by many in New York as excesses-and for the sins of his family, as surely Mrs. Clinton will be. R.F.K., a darling of most Democrats now, had image problems then; not forgotten was a brief stint in his youth with Senator Joseph McCarthy, his combativeness during the McClellan Committee's racketeering investigations, the fact that as a brutal campaign manager he left others in the party bruised and hostile. Mrs. Clinton is blamed for much of the Whitewater and related White House messes, for provoking some of the past years of investigations, as well as for the health care reform debacle. She will be reminded of them.

Once in the Senate, R.F.K. became his own man, thrived, evolved into an extraordinarily influential Senator, and before his six-year term ended-and against all odds-was running for President. Perhaps Mrs. Clinton is taking note of this last point of comparison. Who, after all, believes she is running because her life's dream is to cap her public life as the junior Senator from New York?

Terry Golway is on a short leave. He will return next month.

The fledgling commentator wasn't wholly without talent or insight, but his collegiate literary efforts are of interest mostly because of a freshly relevant coincidence. The young Rudy had a lot to say about a certain controversial issue in the 1964 Senate race.

Mr. Giuliani was a passionate supporter of Robert F. Kennedy, the former Attorney General who had suddenly moved to New York that summer to challenge Senator Kenneth Keating, the Republican incumbent. Appalled by this threatening incursion, Keating and his supporters cried "carpetbagger" loudly and incessantly from Labor Day to Election Day. They said Kennedy knew nothing about New York. They described him as the power-hungry beneficiary of a famous name. They suggested that his real agenda was to launch an eventual campaign for the Presidency. (Less kindly but perhaps more accurately, some critics whispered that he was running to heal the terrible wound left by his brother John's assassination the year before.)

Local editorial pages amplified Keating's assault. As Jack Newfield recalls in his classic R.F.K. biography, The New York Times strongly opposed the Kennedy candidacy. "Why he has any special claim on New York to rescue him from non-office is a mystery," The Times mocked. "Mr. Kennedy apparently needs New York. But does New York really need Bobby Kennedy?"

These old screeds are echoed in Mr. Giuliani's current complaints about Hillary Rodham Clinton, his prospective opponent for the Senate next year. But such arguments didn't impress him back then. Indeed, his recent quips contrast rather sharply with his Quadrangle column of Oct. 9, 1964. In the Kennedy-Keating contest, he evidently viewed the arrival of an ambitious carpetbagger as precisely what New York needed.

In his methodical way, the young Democrat scornfully disposed of Keating's "truly ridiculous" arguments. Under the Constitution, he wrote, "a Senator must be a resident of the state he represents on the day he is elected … Presently Kennedy and his very large family reside in Glen Cove, Long Island, and so he will fulfill the Constitutional limitation." Moreover, he noted eruditely, there was a most venerable and inspiring precedent for Kennedy's candidacy that dated back

to the Revolutionary era. "Rufus King, the first United States Senator from New York, was a Massachusetts native who moved into New York immediately before his election to the Senate."

To carp about Kennedy's abrupt arrival was to resort to "standards of parochialism which were outdated even in 1792," Mr. Giuliani wrote. He expressed a lofty hope that "cosmopolitan New Yorkers can rise above the ridiculous, time-worn provincial attitude that has so disunified our nation."

From there he moved on briskly to the charge that Kennedy had "come to New York to use this state for some kind of sinister, cynical power grab in order to move into higher office." To him, this canard, too, was merely "another example of a screen put up by Senator Keating and his friends to avoid discussing the real issue," meaning which candidate could better serve the state.

Hillary Clinton is not Robert Kennedy, as no doubt we will be reminded, repeatedly and needlessly, in the months to come. (In 1964, Robert Kennedy wasn't quite the secular saint he was later to become, but that, too, is beside the point.) Yet the First Lady's nascent candidacy bears some odd and even haunting parallels to his reluctant electoral debut. She, too, is suspected of seeking office to soothe a painful personal wound. He was urged to run by Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of Harlem. She was first encouraged by Powell's successor, Charles Rangel. Among his chief strategists was a Long Island lawyer and Democratic leader named Jack English; among her top advisers is Harold Ickes, a former partner in English's old law firm. And the New York Times editorial page, openly hostile to Kennedy, now quite predictably takes much the same attitude toward Mrs. Clinton.

But there is something eerily amusing about Mr. Giuliani's words returning to contradict him now. The next time he puts on his overalls and starts wisecracking about Arkansas, he may just have to explain why political carpetbagging offends him so much more today than it did 35 years ago.

His reply is almost certain to include the word "ridiculous."

With assistance from Christopher Tennant.