Replay: Rudy vs. Hillary 2000

By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 06:35:00 AM EST
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, 2008 (all tags)

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The New York Times re-examines the 2000 Senate race between Hillary and Rudy Giuliani.

One interpretation: Leopards don't change their spots. The Rudy who lost interest when he couldn't do it his way in 2000 is the same Rudy who will lose if nominated by Republicans in 2008.

As spring arrived, Mr. Giuliani had yet to give a major speech on federal issues. He was barely campaigning upstate. Mr. Giuliani dismissed the concerns of Republican leaders, explaining that he, unlike Mrs. Clinton, had a full-time job.
Mr. Giuliani’s campaign began to falter in March.

A typical Rudy faux-pas: [More...]

Mr. Giuliani headed upstate, for a Republican dinner in Binghamton. He spoke for exactly 22 minutes, stood for an eight-minute news conference, and then turned for home. Less than a week later, he abruptly canceled four upstate events because, he said, he wanted to attend the rescheduled opening game of the Yankees.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign pounced. Overnight, aides arranged a trip for her to the cities Mr. Giuliani had snubbed and worked the telephone with upstate reporters to stoke the story.

Watch and see. Rudy Giuliani will lose his cool once too often during the campaign. His arrogance will become his defining trait. He ran last time as a personal sport, even though he didn't want the job -- he only wanted to see if he could beat Hillary. This time he wants the job. He wants the glory. But he's still the same person underneath. And this time America won't want him.

< Iowa Poll: Hillary and Obama Tied at 29% | Judge Tells Cops: Return the Pot Plants to the Defendants >

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Replay: Rudy vs. Hillary 2000 | 4 comments (4 topical)

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re focusing on his failings (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by scribe on Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 09:26:14 AM EST

One of the NY tabloids today has a half-page article on a "rookie mistake" Rudy Cue Ball's campaign made - producing and running a commercial by using a photo of people without having first secured the rights from each of them to use all their image in the ad. Not only that, but the particular contexts of the image highlight three of Rudy's peculiar weaknesses - bad racial relations (here, condescending tokenism), surrounding himself with and validating the conduct of loyalists with criminal-sketchiness still going on, and misconstruing his own conduct as "leadership". From the article:

Rudy Giuliani is using a photo of Hale House children and caregivers in a new presidential TV ad without permission - and at least one staffer at the home wants out of the spot.
"I know he's running for President, but I don't want to be involved," said child-care worker Marisol Molina, 44, when shown her image in the ad, titled "Leadership," which Giuliani's campaign debuted last week. ...
"They should have let us know first," added Molina, who has spent nearly six years at the fabled Harlem home for children of jailed or drug-addicted moms.
"I don't want to be in that - no, uh-uh," Molina said firmly.
Molina and others at Hale House - including three toddlers - appear briefly in the ad as part of a photo montage intended to highlight Giuliani's long career as a federal prosecutor and later mayor.
For many of those years and even after he left City Hall, Giuliani returned at Christmastime to Hale House to read stories to the home's young charges - on its surface, a simple act of charity.
The photo ops underscored a clear marriage of political convenience: As mayor, Giuliani got a cheery, kid-friendly welcome in Harlem, at a time when he often had few allies in the black community.
And Hale House director Lorraine Hale - ultimately convicted in 2002 for stealing charity dollars - received City Hall's seal of approval every New Year.

There's a lot to mine in every thing he does, and it all points out that he's a leopard who doesn't change his spots. He's always been his father's son - a thuggish street hustler who has no problem with corruption (in all flavors) so long as he gets his cut and with a particular blindness as to how he gets it.

Rudy & Judy (5.00 / 0) (#3)
by squeaky on Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 04:20:27 PM EST

Looks like we (NYers) paid for the Mayors trysts with Judith Nathan. The worst of it is he took money out of the indigent defense fund.

The billing practices, however, drew formal attention on Jan. 24, 2002, when Thompson, the city comptroller, wrote the newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg, a confidential letter.
One of his auditors, he wrote, had stumbled upon the unexplained travel expenses during a routine audit of the Loft Board, a tiny branch of city government that regulates certain apartments.
Broadening the inquiry, the comptroller wrote, auditors found similar expenses at a range of other unlikely agencies: $10,054 billed to the Office for People With Disabilities and $29,757 to the Procurement Policy Board.
The next year, yet another obscure department, the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, was billed around $400,000 for travel.

Politico via HuffPo

: But, when he left office (none / 0) (#4)
by scribe on Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 04:52:53 PM EST

and he had private funds take care of "organizing" (spelled "s-a-n-i-t-i-z-i-n-g") his mayoral records, they forgot where they'd hidden the receipts.
The accountants didn't, though.
Everyone should really, really read the entire article - it's full of precious, priceless detail. Like how Rudy's schedules showed he would stop for a haircut before heading out to the Hamptons for the booty call. [Insert snarky comment of your choice here.]
And, while we're in a Rudy mood, the Village Voice does another masterful job, showing how one of Giuliani Partners' prize clients, Qatar's internal security department, is headed by one of Rudy's (proclaimed) close friends.
That the close friend appears to be the same guy who tipped off Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to skip Qatar before the FBI could arrest him, back in 1996, Rudy has very little to say. Oh, and that guy is also one of the founders of (and a big stakeholder in) ... al-Jazeera.
Some tidbits (go, read it all):

In retrospect, Giuliani's embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani's current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls "Islamic terrorists"--an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.
The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM--the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden--on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.
"Subject, verb, 9/11", fer sher.

OK, maybe he'll lose his cool.... (none / 0) (#1)
by A DC Wonk on Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 08:20:11 AM EST

... but he's got a lot more handlers to "handle" it. And we already know we have a whole lot of reporters ready to pounce on anything that Hilary does that is out of, or even perceived to be out of the ordinary (e.g., her laugh).

This time he wants the job.

Yes, I think that makes a huge difference. It makes all the difference (compare this to, say, Fred Thompson), and is why this campaign will be different.

He wants the glory. But he's still the same person underneath.

That doesn't mean the public will see what is underneath.

Case in point: he's a congenital and obsessive liar. Has the media focused on that at all? They've had a gazillion chances.