The Nation - Giuliani doesn't sugarcoat his tough-guy persona - His combative style appears to be working as he leads in the Republican race.

What he gave them was a dose of New York.

When one woman fretted that a local paper mill had eliminated 300 jobs, Giuliani cut her off and advised that she focus on something "positive," like recruiting a new employer to town.

When a woman worried about rising property taxes, he told her to elect smarter local officials.

A 9-year-old girl, afraid of another attack like the one on Sept. 11, sparked a finger-waving lecture at another point in the day from Giuliani, who said that Democrats were afraid to use the term "Islamic terrorism." "You have to face your enemy," he told the third-grader, Kailey Lemieux.

Other politicians might have expressed empathy, or drawn voters into deeper conversation, or lightened the talk of violence around elementary school children. But not the former New York mayor. With his intense demeanor and aggressive policy stances -- such as pledging to "prevent" Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon or to "set them back five or 10 years" -- Giuliani has methodically built an image as the toughest guy on the block, unafraid of looking belligerent in the cause of keeping America safe.

Though it isn't always pretty up close, Giuliani's demeanor seems to be working. He leads the national polls for a Republican nomination that many believed he could never win because of his relatively liberal views on abortion and other social issues.

As a counterweight to his positions on social policy, Giuliani has broadened his image, once narrowly rooted in his leadership after Sept. 11, to one that projects strength on many fronts.

The man who led New York City through the trauma of terrorist attacks has promised to keep Al Qaeda on the defensive, possibly even sending troops into Pakistan uninvited. The man who chased prostitutes from Times Square now casts himself as a defender of free speech for religious groups and a protector of families from crime, drugs and high taxes.

And the man who governed a Democratic city as a Republican mayor, staring down the "toughest labor unions that anybody ever met," is promoting himself as the strongest opponent to the Democrats' presidential front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.