That is why it is important, even for those of us who are not Republicans, that the Republicans come up with a candidate who not only has guts and brains but who also knows how to communicate.

Looking for an articulate Republican narrows the field considerably. The most articulate, though in different ways, are Rudolph Giuliani and Newt Gingrich.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a well-spoken gentleman, and would probably make a good president, but the Republicans already have well-spoken gentlemen, many of whom have never expressed a moment of outrage in their whole careers.

There is no question that Newt Gingrich is politically savvy and, at the same time, is someone with a real grasp of the larger historic issues at home and abroad. He might well make the best president of all the candidates in either party.

But what kind of presidential candidate would he make? He is certainly very articulate, but in the low-key and sometimes ironic manner of a college professor, which he once was.

It is hard to recall Newt Gingrich expressing any outrage, even when he was falsely accused of abandoning and starving the poor by not appropriating enough money for programs to help them -- even after he had in fact increased the spending for such programs.

Rudolph Giuliani is a New York street kind of guy, who doesn't respond to lying attacks with professorial detachment, irony and understatement. He is a fighter.

Maybe a presidential ticket with Gingrich and Giuliani, or Giuliani and Gingrich, would be the Republicans' best hope -- and the country's. It would certainly be a big improvement over some of the candidates the Republicans have put out there in the past.