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Tuesday, November 06, 2007
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 THE BALLAD OF RUDY & BERNIE
Since I have the smartest readers on the World Wide Web, I have to assume that some of you might run for president one day. I'd do it, but the Constitution won't let me. Besides, I'm very lazy, and while this hasn't stopped Fred Thompson, he's not drunk most of the time. I famously am.
That being the case, I'll stick with being a world famous pundit. As I have for the last four years, I'll explain how the candidates are screwing themselves and each other with a bewildering disregard to things like decorum, strategy and common sense.
Other than John Edwards, I'm hard pressed to find someone screwing themselves so thoroughly as former New York City mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. It really is a beautiful thing to see. It's almost as if he's daring Republican primary voters to give him the nomination.
Case in point; Rudy's strange relationship with his former police commissioner and business partner, Bernard Kerik.
Giuliani was a strange little man long before he started running for president. Indeed, immediately before 9/11, New Yorkers were so tired of him that they longed for the day when they would never hear his name again. Yes, he twice won election as a Republican in America's most liberal city - the second time by a truly huge margin - but that was largely because his opponents were nobodies.
Black people and ferret owners harbor a special hatred for Rudy, but they're hardly alone. For most of his term, national Republicans wanted to see him die a lonely death for his 1994 endorsement of Mario Cuomo's re-election as governor. In this light, Giuliani's mockery of Mitt Romney's 1992 primary vote for Paul Tsongas is particularly rich. Doubly so when you consider that Rudy was one of only five Americans who voted for George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election.
Once elected, Giuliani declared one of his top priorities would be crime reduction. And crime was coming down impressively under Rudy's first police commissioner, William Bratton. It then stands to reason that Hizzoner fired Bratton for the unforgivable sin of being in the news too often.
Mayor Giuliani had a number of police commissioners, ending up with Kerik, who was in office on 9/11. So enamoured with Kerik was Rudy that he ws invited to be a senior associate at Rudy's private firm, Giuliani Partners.
Kerik's appointment was highly strange and deeply weird. His career skyrocketed from a stink as Giuliani's driver and bodyguard. His became the Commissioner of Corrections and Police Commissioner despite having no college degree, a department requirement since 1985. As he later did in endorsing Kerik for Director of Homeland Security, Giuliani simply bypassed the rules and regulations he found tiresome.
As it happens, those rules and regulations actually serve a purpose. They have a neat way of ferreting out less than savoury characters. And it turned out that few charcters were less savoury than Bernie Kerik. And that came to light as a result of the FBI vetting process for Kerik's Homeland Security nomination.
Among other things, it came to light that Kerik was accepting "loans" from mobbed-up New Jersey construction firms and failing to report them, for which he was fined nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year. It was also learned that Kerik used an apartment rented for use by 9/11 recovery workers to have an affair with publisher Judith Regan.
And Bernie's still not out of the woods. It is likely that he'll face a federal indictment on multiple felony counts later this month. Kerik refused a plea bargain this past March. Among the charges Kerik will face are bribery, obstruction of justice and tax evasion.
But Rudy wants you to pay no attention to that and focus on the really important stuff.
Rudy Giuliani said Monday that if his achievements as president are as good as the crime-reduction results of his New York police commissioner, a man now under criminal investigation himself, "this country will be in great shape." Giuliani, in an interview with The Associated Press, acknowledged mistakes by Bernard Kerik, who was police commissioner when Giuliani was mayor. But he said crime reduction for the city was more important.
Because it takes a crook to catch a crook? What the fuck is Rudy thinking?
Some of you might have noticed that the GOP has had some ethics problems in the last couple of years. Indeed, the party paid a heavy price for those problems last year, losing both houses of Congress to the genetically wrong and patently silly Democrats. So what does the Republican frontrunner for fucking president do? He comes out and endorses the crime-fighting achievements of a goddamn felon, that's what!
Giuliani has accepted responsibility for his role in Kerik's embarrassing 2004 withdrawal as President Bush's Homeland Security nominee after revelation of tax problems. Ethics questions and corruption allegations also have swirled around Kerik. But the former New York mayor said the results of the commissioner's time in New York far outweigh isolated incidences.
"Bernie Kerik worked for me while I was mayor of New York City. There were mistakes made with Bernie Kerik. But what's the ultimate result for the people of New York City? The ultimate result for the people of New York City was a 74 percent reduction in shootings, a 60 percent reduction in crime, a correction program that went from being one of the worst in the country to one that was on '60 Minutes' as the best in the country, 90 percent reduction of violence in the jails." 
Gadzooks! Is Rudy Giuliani actually suggesting that official corruption is all right as long you're really good at your day job? Can we therefore expect him to nominate Michael Milken as Secretary of the Treasury? How about John Gotti, Jr. as Director of the FBI? Under this apparent Giuliani standard, they both have outstanding resumes.
And saying that "mistakes were made with Bernie Kerik" is an understatement of almost Clintonian proportions. The last time I checked, the taking of bribes by police officers was generally accepted as a bad thing. Apparently, Rudy Giuliani agrees, but doesn't think that its all that bad.
"Sure, there were issues, but if I have the same degree of success and failure as president of the United States, this country will be in great shape," Giuliani said. The country will be in fantastic shape. And the only thing that it will cost you is your faith in government and the rule of law. But after the last two administrations, neither of those things really matter all that much anyhow.
The Kerik story is the main reason that I've never taken Giuilani's candidacy all that seriously. It's been around for a good, long time, wasn't going anywhere, and showed little promise of getting any better. It's a time-bomb, waiting out there to blow Rudy up. And Rudy, being Rudy, is throwing himself right on top of it.
Republicans have a long-standing tradition of not kicking the shit out of their front-runners, but the media and the Democrats aren't quite so shy. If Kerik is indicted less than two months before people start voting, Giuliani is going to have a very hard time talking about anything else. And after such a full-throated defence of Kerik this week, Rudy is going look particularly craven throwing him under the bus when he gets indicted later in he month.
Suggesting that one should minimize Bernie Kerik's corruption because of his crime fighting record is like a rapist saying that he should be forgiven because he's an awfully good lover. Kerik's taking of bribes from mafia-controlled companies is directly germaine to his official duties. And Rudy Giuliani is either too stupid or too arrogant to recognize that.
I'd be surprised if the other Republican candidates use this against Rudy, so he's still the likely nominee. But the media and the Clinton campaign will destroy him in a general election with it. The Kerik saga undercuts Giuliani's central campaign strength, his executive experience and judgement.
Rudy Giuliani is about to be crucified on the cross that Kerik built. And it's going to be a beautiful thing to see.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Strange Relationship By: Prince From: Sign O the Times
PermalinkLabels: Fun With Politics, I Fought The Law
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