People with their heads screwed on right knew, back in the late '90's, that there was no way, with his very dubious reputation and proven incapabilities, George W. Bush would ever get to the White House. Now we're looking at Rudy Giuliani with the same incredulous eyes. Frank Rich writes:
New Yorkers who remember Rudy Giuliani as the bullying New York mayor, not as the terminally cheerful “America’s Mayor” cooing to babies in New Hampshire, have always banked on one certainty: his presidential candidacy was so preposterous it would implode before he got anywhere near the White House.
W's driving while drunk story was told all around Texas; we knew about Bush's non-service in the National Guard; from Kennebunk right down I-95 to Jonathan Bush's financial and political empire in New York state, and on to Washington and west to Big Bend, the reputation of the Bush family was a lot less than lovely, and George W seemed to symbolize much of three generations of sleaze. No way could this guy manage to shake off the dirt clinging to his past.
We reassured ourselves, the all-powerful Republican values enforcers were so highly principled that they would excommunicate him because of his liberal social views, three wives and estranged children. Or a firewall would be erected by the firefighters who are enraged by his self-aggrandizing rewrite of 9/11 history. Or Judith Giuliani, with her long-hidden first marriage and Louis Vuitton ’tude, would send red-state voters screaming into the night.
Ridiculous though it may seem, we are at risk for reliving the ascendancy of one of America's least attractive options to the presidency. Even if you avoid looking at the mud clinging to his reputation, there's the impossibility of electing another president who embraces both Bush/Cheney authoritarianism and hot-shot military action.
Waiting in the wings is a knock-down for Rudy Giuliani, one which might just save us from ourselves. Granted, the media have given him a big pass. But looky here: Judith Regan is about to happen. A Murdoch malcontent (he fired her), Regan has the key to Giuliani's relationship with the newly-indicted Bernard Kerik. As Frank Rich tells it, Judith Regan's affair with Kerik -- and, incidentally, with Robert Ailes, Giuliani's erstwhile media consultant -- have given her access to information about Giuliani that she wouldn't be shy about passing it on. She may turn out to be the Linda Tripp of Rudy's downfall.
...The Chicago Tribune ...last month on its front page revisited the story of how, after Mr. Giuliani left office, his mayoral papers were temporarily transferred to a private, tax-exempt foundation run by his supporters and financed with $1.5 million from mostly undisclosed donors. The foundation, which shares the same address as Giuliani Partners, copied and archived the records before sending them back to New York’s municipal archives. Historians told The Tribune there’s no way to verify that the papers were returned to government custody intact. Mayor Bloomberg has since signed a law that will prevent this unprecedented deal from being repeated.
Journalists, like generals, love to refight the last war, so the unavailability of millions of Hillary Clinton’s papers has received all the coverage the Giuliani campaign has been spared. But while the release of those first lady records should indeed be accelerated, it’s hard to imagine many more scandals will turn up after six volumes of “Whitewater,” an impeachment trial and the avalanche of other investigative reportage on the Clintons then and now.
The Giuliani story, by contrast, is relatively virgin territory. And with the filing of a lawsuit by a vengeful eyewitness who was fired from her job, it may just have gained its own reincarnation of Linda Tripp.
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