After terrorists brought fear and death to Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, Mayor Rudy Giuliani's brand of tough-talking, New York City bravado and brawn was so appealing his lagging approval ratings doubled and he catapulted into the heart of a mourning America.

But whether more than six years later the U.S. is ready to elect a former prosecutor and sharp-elbowed city boy to be its next president is up for debate, particularly now that Giuliani, who doesn't embody many of the traditional conservative social values, maintains the lead over his opponents in the Republican primary field.

"He's a New Yorker — he's what the rest of the country thinks of a New Yorker. The tough-guy image may play well in the city but not well in Peoria," said John Gizzi, political editor for the conservative Human Events magazine.

Then again, Gizzi added, the post-Sept. 11 theory may still apply: voters aren’t necessarily looking for someone they "like" but someone who can "stand firmly with the prosecutors and the police" against the bad guys.

A former U.S. attorney in New York and assistant deputy attorney general in the Ford administration, Giuliani helped convict thousands of criminals and patented what is now called the "perp walk" — parading suspects in front of an alerted, frenzied media. He has put away serious high-profile criminals in some of the biggest white collar and organized crime cases in recent history.

A lifelong New Yorker who rose up from less-than-idyllic beginnings in the city's Italian-American community to become mayor from 1994 to 2002, Giuliani is also credited for reducing crime and transforming its gritty streets — making places like Times Square and 42nd Street sparkle for tourists, and once dubious neighborhoods a new mecca for wealthy urban dwellers.

"People think he made New York livable," said Sean Evans, a political science professor at Union University in Tennessee. "He cleaned up Times Square, cut taxes, he reduced crime — that's what he focuses on."

But Giulani's reputation as mayor wasn’t always the shining white knight. Others recall that Giuliani's approval ratings were sagging before Sept. 11, 2001. Among other complaints, he had been accused of protecting aggressive, even racist police tactics and sweeping the poor out of sight to achieve his urban transformation. Those complaints received new repetition recently when his former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, was indicted on 16 charges, including conspiracy and tax fraud.

During his tenure as mayor, the complaints about him were varied, said Stanley Fish, New York Times columnist and law professor at the Florida International University in Miami. He was called "peremptory, arrogant and tended toward the dictatorial, etc."

"I don’t think that's come through in the campaign so far, at least in the clips I've seen," Fish said. "That part of his personality is muted."

Ironically, much of the critique of Giuliani so far in the campaign has focused on his battle for the conservative base, and how his more liberal positions on issues like abortion, gay rights and guns might prevent him from getting full support for the GOP nomination. It's also unclear whether this other side of his personality will surface as a problem in the general election, if he makes it that far.

"That whole sharp-elbowed New York style is at some point going to be put under a microscope and it hasn't yet," said one Republican image-maker who did not want to be named. "I think he is a very 'my way or the highway' kind of guy and that may cause some difficulties at the presidential level."

Erick Erickson, co-founder of the conservative Web log RedState.org, said Giuliani's style my be brash and blunt, but it's perceived by voters so far as confident and honest, and that is why people are attracted to him, and why recent polling indicates he has the best shot of beating the Democratic nominee for the White House.

"He seems like an honest guy — people like him — he seems like one of us," said Erickson, acknowledging that while people find it "refreshing" when the "brassy mayor comes out on the campaign trail," he has to pay attention to what he is saying and how he is saying it.

If it's not overdone, Fish says he thinks Giuliani's forceful, self-assured image can help him in both the primaries and general election, pointing out that Giuliani garnered some of the biggest applause during the May televised GOP debate in South Carolina, when he blasted candidate Ron Paul for suggesting U.S foreign policy was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"He's a candidate, perhaps unlike other candidates, whose strength with the primary may be his strength in the general election," said Fish.

For his part, Giuliani has taken the position that he is confident in his skin, and though he has tried to soften his past support for gun control to appease Second Amendment advocates, toughen his stance on illegal immigration and talk about God more freely, he has been open about his views on abortion rights and unapologetic about his three marriages — at least one of which ended after claims of infidelity. He also tries to distance himself quite obviously from one his fiercest rivals in the field, Mitt Romney, who has been accused of saying and doing anything to win.

"With me you know what you're going to get. I mean, I explain to you who I am. I tell you who I am. You can figure out the areas you agree, the areas you disagree," he told reporters on a trip through New Hampshire in October.

But not everyone is convinced that Giuliani can translate his experience in New York into the top slot at the White House.

In response, Giuliani has brought on board a team of hawks and ideologues to fill out his foreign policy team, including prominent neoconservative Norman Podhoretz, author of the newly-released tome, "World War IV," and scholar Daniel Pipes, who spends a great deal of time outing "Islamo-fascist" professors on college campuses.

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs magazine outlining his foreign policy platform, Giuliani made clear he hopes to broaden his take-no-prisoners approach beyond that of his old Manhattan jurisdiction. His vision for a safer, more livable New York is now his vision for the world.

It could work, depending on where American electorate is come Nov. 4, 2000 — whether it is more worried about security or more weary of war and ready for a larger diplomatic approach. In the latter case, said Fish, Giuliani needs to demonstrate that he has prowess beyond that of a law and order guy.

"As mayor of New York City, he presided over a complex operation … but it was not as if it were a huge administrative performance that would have been visible to the rest of the world," Fish said. "What we do know about his ability to talk about the wide range of questions the president needs to deal with on their first day of taking office?"