Mayor Giuliani will be honored tonight by the Manhattan Institute at its annual Alexander Hamilton dinner, and it is hard to think of a more fitting evening. It was the Manhattan Institute that nursed in this town the ideas that triumphed in the 1990s – and are still ascendant – and it was Mayor Giuliani who had the wisdom, the foresight to go to the Manhattan Institute in search of ideas on which to build a mayoralty that changed this city, that proved it could be governable, and that laid the basis for the gains that have been made by, in Mayor Bloomberg, another wonderful leader.

It has been more than four years since Mr. Giuliani left office, and it is no small thing that there are still millions of New Yorkers, and many millions of Americans, who are eager for more of his leadership. The first time your editors sat down with him for an extended conversation about political principles was in the early 1990s, when he was running in the campaign that would, four years after a bitter defeat, finally elevate him to the mayoralty. To this day we rank the interview as one of the clearest, most coherent explications of a political philosophy that we’ve ever heard.

This was when we first began to hear his talk of “one standard” and to gain the sense that, behind all the tough-guy image and political aggressiveness, was a serious intellectual in his own right, a person who read and thought about issues. Certainly he could be confrontational, toward, say, the professional poverty advocates and race hustlers. But he could also be warm, toward the immigrants and homeowners and small entrepreneurs that make this city great. And we began to gain the sense then of one of his greatest traits, his capacity for political incorrectness.

By this we mean the streak of his personality that could, say, send police officers to escort Yasser Arafat out of a concert in the city because he just understood that it was a mockery. This is the same streak that permitted him to just tear up a $10 million check from a Saudi billionaire when it came with language that was offensive to a city in which 3,000 of its citizens had just been slaughtered in the name of the same hatred the donor was preaching. This is a streak that Mr. Giuliani shares with President Bush.

For the Manhattan Institute to honor Mr. Giuliani tonight makes a statement about conservative ideals at a moment when the conservative movement is at a crossroads. Some conservatives want to stop supporting freedom abroad and attack immigration here at home. Mr. Giuliani stands for an optimistic brand of conservatism that does not tolerate terrorists or negotiate with them and that understands that immigration strengthens America’s culture and economy rather than weakens it. In a conservative movement often hostile to government, Mr. Giuliani understood the role of honest government and capitalism in supporting freedom.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether Mr. Giuliani will run for president. There are plenty of good candidates, and this isn’t the moment for an endorsement. But count this newspaper as in the camp that hopes Mr. Giuliani will run, not only because we think he’d do a fine job of running the country were he to win but because his ideas – on tax cuts, on fighting terrorism, on immigration, on vouchers for private and parochial school students – would be healthy for the national debate. We have not the slightest doubt that the audience receptive to these kinds of ideas extends far beyond the crowd that will gather tonight to see the prince of the city honored in the name of Hamilton.