Day: March 4, 2007

Rudy Giuliani’s Home Life is a Mess

Trish

Rut-roh! America’s mayor isn’t the world’s greatest dad. According to his son, Rudy’s kids are not that into their dad’s third wife. Then again, Rudy doesn’t seem that into his kids.

Though he supports his father, Andrew Giuliani does not plan on participating in his campaign. “I will not be active in his campaign,” he said. “I am too busy with golf.”

Andrew Giuliani said he and his father have recently tried to reconcile after not speaking “for a decent amount of time.” In the [recent New York] Times article, Andrew attributed their strained relationship to [Judith] Nathan, saying, “There’s obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife.”

According to the Times, Rudy Giuliani used to pride himself on attending all his children’s events, but at some point after his marriage to Nathan in 2003 he stopped. He missed his son’s graduation in 2005 and his 17-year old daughter’s plays in the last 18 months…

Though he supports his father, Andrew Giuliani does not plan on participating in his campaign. As a Duke University sophomore and aspiring professional golfer, he has no time for distractions.

“I will not be active in his campaign,” he said. “I am too busy with golf.”

Now there’s a rousing endorsement. At least one pundit, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, thinks Rudy’s home life could be a liability.

According to Brinkley, the critical area candidates must keep pristine during the grueling race to the White House is their wholesome family image. Scenes like Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., with his irresistible little girls or Republican Mitt Romney surrounding himself with his children and grandchildren when he announced his run for president are priceless.

“The big moment, the memorable moment, isn’t the speech but it’s when the candidate steps forward, the wife comes on, the kids rush on and you hear this great ‘aww,’ and everyone feels there is a specialness to this person,” Brinkley said.

But Rudy is special. How many people have married their second cousin, then moved in with a T.V. personality while still married to her, then had the marriage annulled since it was — after all — to his second cousin, proceeded to marry the T.V. chick and have two kids with her while carrying on a long-term and fairly public relationship with a staffer, then called a press conference to announce he was divorcing the second wife before mentioning it to her, and then married, not the staffer, but a drug company rep?

Yes, there is a “specialness” to Rudy that few men can match. I hope.

Quote du Jour

Jon Ponder

“He’s not bright enough to be President. For a long time, anyone who questioned Bush’s ability to think was pointed to the opinion polls and told that discussing whether or not the President is borderline stupid was bad manners and counterproductive. Actually, that is the main problem with Bush. He neither reads, nor writes, nor speaks well. It turns out that a C average is not good enough for the Presidency.”

— Molly Ivins, March 2004

When Will Cable News Report on the U.S. Attorney Scandal?

Jon Ponder

Now that Anna Nicole Smith’s body has been buried (for the time being anyway) maybe the cable news channels can find time to do in-depth reporting on the Bush administration’s mass firing of U.S. attorneys last December.

With no underlings to blame for the firings, the White House will resort to its next best trick — they will launch a coordinated smear campaign against the prosecutors as early as Monday morning.

If nothing else, they could cover a hearing into the matter announced by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee for Tuesday at 2 p.m. Four of the fired prosecutors — Carol Lam of California, David Iglesias of New Mexico, H.E. “Bud” Cummins of Arkansas and John McKay of Seattle — have been subpoenaed to appear.

Bush officials say they are surprised about the uproar over the firings — and shocked, shocked, I tell ya — that the Dems would say the dismissals were motivated by politics. True to form, however, the excuse they offer for the purge — that the prosecutors all had poor performance records — does not square with reality on the ground. In fact, the fired attorneys appear to have been well-respected, competent and independent. Several had just received exemplary performance reviews, and none have been reported to have had bad reviews.

Democrats suspect that it was the prosecutors’ independence that led to their dismissals — that the White House judged them as not toeing the Bush line sufficiently, and now intends to replace them with Republican hacks.

In a dismaying and rather unbelievable turn of events, Democrats also recently learned that a heretofore overlooked provision in the Patriot Act grants Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzalez the power to fill the vacancies without Senate approval. (Didn’t anybody read that bill before they signed it?)

On top of all this, there are the charges of political meddling in investigations. In New Mexico, David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney who was fired, has said that two Republicans from the state’s congressional delegation tried imprpoperly to influence an investigation into a Democratic politician. He says he received calls last October from a senator and a House member — and that because he would not accede to the pressure, the senator urged the Justice Dept. to fire him.

Today the Washington Post reported that Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, has admitted he made a call to Iglesias, but says he called simply to inquire about the status of the investigation, but did not threaten or pressure Iglesias, which would have been an ethics violation. However, Domenici also admits he did recommend that Iglesias be terminated.

Iglesias also said he would name the senator and the representative (assumed to be Heather Wilson) if asked during the hearings, so Domenici’s admission — released into the Sunday news void — was done preemptively to soften the blow on the ethics charges.

The knee jerk reaction of the Bush White House is to pin blame for controversies and scandals on their flunkies. But they are on the record as having signed off on the dismissals, although they insist it was all just routine.

With no underlings to blame, the White House will have to rely on its next best trick — a coordinated smear campaign against the fired prosecutors, which could start as early as Monday morning.