Rudy Giuliani's opponents, if he should reach the general election, were never going to let his 9/11-inspired "America's Mayor" image go unchallenged, particularly not when critics of that image are eager to talk. Managing a city the size of New York with all the competing interests through a crisis on the scale of September 11 is bound to incite hostility from certain quarters.

And so it has, with the long simmering spat between Giuliani and the International Association of Fire Fighters finally making headlines. The head of the union, Harold Schaitberger, initially declined to invite Giuliani's to yesterday's candidate forum, for reasons he outlined in a letter to members. When he relented, Giuliani declined. The letter was then leaked and soon enough everyone was talking about Giuliani and the firefighters.

There are two issues to separate here. First, it's no secret Giuliani has a problem with unions going back to early in his mayoralty. So Schaitberger saying that his union won't endorse Giuliani is not news - the IAFF hasn't ever endorsed a Republican anyway. The news is that Giuliani appears to have a problem with some firefighters for decisions he made soon after 9/11. In particular, the firefighters have never been able to forgive Rudy for cutting short their search-and-rescue efforts for victims lost in the World Trade Center rubble, many of them fallen firefighters.

Should Giuliani win the nomination there's no question that the Democrats will use the firefighters to directly attack his 9/11 reputation. The question is what that assault would look like and how effective could it be. Some on the left seem to think that, if managed properly, the attack could be devastating.

For instance, take Robert Polner's Salon.com essay, "What an anti-Giuliani ad should say":

In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth challenged the established image of John Kerry as a decorated, wounded Vietnam War hero. Democrats who had supported Kerry because they thought his military service made him electable were shocked to find a Republican-funded 527 group using spurious information and savage ads to create doubt in the electorate about the candidate's war record. Should Rudy Giuliani be the Republican nominee in 2008, Democrats can create the same doubt about him, but without relying on distortion. They could instead use the truthful words of sympathetic subjects who credibly blame Giuliani for the loss of their loved ones on Sept. 11.

Essentially, Polner wants the Democrats to go beyond the firefighters and highlight the 9/11 victims' families in a series of television ads, a la the Swift Vets. There is of course no shortage of such family members out there with a long-standing hatred for Giuliani. Polner quotes Sally Regenhard, whose son was a firefighter killed on 9/11, and Rosaleen Tallon, who lost her firefighter brother. But Polner didn't just discover Regenhard and Tallon; both have become media figures since 9/11. Regenhard, who now runs a group to improve skyscraper safety, heckled Giuliani as he testified before the 9/11 Commission, holding up a sign with the word "Fiction."

Imagine what a talented and aggressive Democratic media consultant could do with Giuliani's real 9/11 record. Imagine Rosaleen Tallon and a Greek chorus of angry, bereaved New Yorkers in a spate of heart-tugging commercials.

Indeed, it would be a heart-wrenching vision. The problem is I don't think those who are clamoring for a "swiftboating" of Giuliani have really considered two important differences. First, for Polner to write that Democrats were "shocked" when the first Swift Boat ads appeared is telling. The Swift Vets held a press conference in Washington in May 2004, even though the media gave them almost zero coverage. So it wasn't like they appeared suddenly right after the Democratic Convention in August. Had the Democrats been paying attention, they would have had rebuttal ads ready to go right after the first Swift Vet ad appeared. Instead, the Swift Vets dominated the coverage for two weeks before Kerry even responded to their allegations.

Now consider Giuliani, who's been hearing criticism from the firefighters and the Regenhards and the Tallons since 9/11. Is it at all plausible that his critics, even with the kind of public-relations campaign Polner envisions, will catch him flat-footed?

Second, Polner errs in thinking that Giuliani's 9/11 reputation can be condensed to the firefighters and their grieving families. Look at this way: Has any credible person or group come forward to claim that Giuliani's handling of 9/11 and its aftermath on the whole left New York worse off? Setting aside the charges of one aggrieved group (and the firefighters are a big one, admittedly), who is claiming New York suffered more than it benefited from Giuliani's leadership in the days and weeks after 9/11? Were the Democrats to go after Rudy on 9/11, Rudy could respond with all the equally heart-wrenching footage from that day, with him in the thick of things -- the same footage Democrats howled that the Bush Team was exploiting in 2004. Rudy would win that tussle.

All of which is not to say that these kinds of 9/11 anti-Giuliani ads wouldn't bite. It's just a little too much wishful thinking to believe that they could destroy Giuliani's 9/11 aura.