Giulani's Appeal?

Is it the SOB factor as Tim McNabb writes:

One of the chronic problems with the Bush Administration is that the President is insufficiently vindictive to deal with the enemies of this republic, both foreign and domestic. President Bush is often nicer to his enemies than he is to his friends.

Rudy Giuliani, however, strikes me as a guy who can be a really mean SOB, a man not to be crossed.

I am a social conservative, and I try to be a good practitioner of Christianity (with varying degrees of success; please don't blame Jesus for my failures). Admiring vindictive SOBs may strike the casual observer as a contradiction, but as it says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for peace, and a time for war. Spite for the sake of spite is a vice, but if an opponent has proven itself to be unwilling to accept the carrot, a stick is necessary. Failure to apply the stick in that situation is no virtue. Spare the rod, spoil the liberal, to misuse holy writ.

Havcing just finished Bill Bratton's memoir, Turnaround, Bratton seems to indicate that Giuliani is an SOB, albeit an SOB with a mission as opposed to just being plain vindictive.

There is something to be said for a leader who won't take flak from anyone, certainly not our enemies. But is it more important to have the reputation for being an SOB or to actually be an SOB?