A new ‘serial exaggerator’ for ’08

July 29, 2007

In any presidential campaign, critical media narratives develop around candidates, which are often tough to break. Al Gore, for example, was labeled a “serial exaggerator.” It was a bogus story, but it dogged Gore throughout 2000, and raised doubts about his veracity.

Reporters haven’t picked up on it yet, but Rudy Giuliani is offering his critics the exact same storyline. The New York Daily News, for example, reports today:

It is Rudy Giuliani’s favorite boast on the presidential campaign trail: “I cut taxes 23 times” as mayor of New York, he says, a claim inevitably met by applause.

The impressive-sounding stat stars in radio ads this week in New Hampshire and Iowa, where the voiceover asserts that Giuliani “cut or eliminated 23 taxes.”

Trouble is, it’s not really true, say tax-cutting allies of the former mayor, as well as experts at the city’s Independent Budget Office and elsewhere.

To arrive at the number he likes to cite on the stump, Giuliani has to claim credit for tax cuts initiated by others, tax cuts he opposed, and in one instance, he counts one tax cut twice. Best of all, Giuliani includes a scuttled tax increase on his list (“We don’t consider not raising a tax a tax cut,” said Charles Brescher of the city’s Independent Budget Office).

Examples like these keep piling up.

On Friday, he argued that Democrats “refuse to admit the existence of Islamic terrorism,” which is obviously false. His explanation for quitting the Iraq Study Group proved to be untrue. Last week, Giuliani told an audience that the leading Democratic candidates “want to raise your taxes 20 to 30 percent,” a claim unsupported by reality. According to the International Association of Firefighters many of his FDNY claims are completely false.

I’m sure there are other examples — feel free to add more in comments — these are just a few recent ones that come to mind. The point is, Giuliani is offering a negative media narrative that could seriously undermine his campaign. Maybe it’s a symptom of an inexperienced candidate who lacks discipline on the national stage, maybe Giuliani just needs to give his speeches a little boost, so he takes certain liberties with the truth.

Either way, one of these days, this might come back to haunt him.

Don’t count on it.

  • But, but, but it isn’t fair to scrutinize the self-styled “America’s Mayor” because if he’s not elected then Islamic terrorists will make us all wear burkhas.

    Rudy was willing to lie to his ex-wife, what makes anyone think that he’ll cavil at lying to the rest of us?

  • This guy is scum. He thinks he’s being a practical realist, and that’s why he has to run his campaign like that. He’s showing himself up as someone who doesn’t deserve to be elected to anything.

  • “Maybe it’s a symptom of an inexperienced candidate who lacks discipline on the national stage, maybe Giuliani just needs to give his speeches a little boost, so he takes certain liberties with the truth.”

    I hate to bash the press once again, but along with the Democrats, at least in the past, it’s been that group’s members that have allowed this nonsense to continue. To take just one example, each time that the Bush administration has proposed to cut taxes, it’s used bogus numbers to sell them. It may have claimed that the middle class would do well, but that’s only because it would average the numbers, for instance. It wasn’t hard to see through these false claims, as many liberals in the blogosphere proved, but the media, if was reporting at all on how ridiculous the administration’s claims were, obviously saw its reporting fall on deaf ears.

    So no, I don’t think it’s the work of an inexperienced candidate, at least not entirely. For as much as Giuliani sucks as a person, he’s not a dumb guy. He probably knows exactly what he’s doing. After all, Bush has proven it’s not hard to lie so brazenly.

  • Take 2:

    …this might come back to haunt him

    Absolutely! The only question is when. I’m voting for sometime between hell freezing over and Alberto G. being fired.

  • So—you want this to come back and haunt him? Just start asking people why Roo-Dee Doody feels the need to tell “Oval Office-esque” lies more than a year before the presidential election? Has he already crowned himself Giuliani the First, Emperor and High Lord Bishop of the Republic? The guy’s a bona-fide nex-gen protype for Culture of Corruption 2.0….

  • CB, the key point in your post is, “Reporters haven’t picked up on it yet.” What makes you think that mainstream reporters– employees of the big corporations– will scrutinize a Republican candidate? In 2000, they went after Gore not because they thought the “exaggerator” meme would make a good story. That was just an added bonus. No, they went after Gore because he had the bad luck of . . . being a Democrat. The Repubs can lie, lie, lie all they want, and the press will roll over. The minute a Democrat makes any statement that could be perceived as equivocating, the press will jump all over him or her, and drag the campaign into the realm of high-school mean-spirited cliquishness. They will leave Rudy alone, which makes it that much more important for those of us in the blogosphere– the REAL reporters– to call him out on his falsehoods.

  • Rudy is writing the Dems’ campaign ads should he get the nomination — provided Dems are smart enough to use them, which, of course, is not a given.

  • That’s only half the equation – the other half is a gullible and generally uninformed electorate that is begging to be lied to. If Giuliani said he had discovered a cure for cancer, there’d be a crowd of anxious believers ready to line up. Giuliani doesn’t need Karl Rove – he’s got Joe Bessimer, who was the most likely source of the cliché, “there’s a sucker born every minute”. There’s a fairly large crowd of the curiously incurious who want to remember Giuliani that way, regardless of the facts. These are the same people who hiss whenever some assrocket suggests that Barack Obama’s political experience is limited – without noticing that Giuliani has none at all.

    Charlatans like Giuliani will see their success rate dwindle when the public learns to examine all claims critically, and to treat everything that comes out of a politician’s mouth as a probable lie until proven otherwise. In the meantime, dirty tricks still work, and you’ve gotta keep your eye on the ball. Remember, before you can have any political clout whatever, you have to win the office. Therefore, doing whatever it takes to achieve that critical first step often becomes a self-justifying tactic.

  • one of these days, this might come back to haunt him.

    To add to sarabeth’s “takes” (@7 & 8):
    In Kazachstan, maybe? Or Cuba? Not in the US.

  • “These are the same people who hiss whenever some assrocket suggests that Barack Obama’s political experience is limited – without noticing that Giuliani has none at all.”

    I don’t mean to sound like a dick here, but I think you’re indicating part of the problem (not that you are part of the problem, mind youi). It’s not that Giuliani has no political experience or even executive experience. He has both, although the success of each is arguable. The main reason he’s running is that he supposedly has an amazing amount of foreign policy and national security experience–an incredible knowledge of the threat of terrorism, the ability to protect the nation, the ability to lead our armed forces, and so on. The problem is, he has only the aura of expertise.

    Until we attack that head on, he’s going to keep getting away with it. And as time passes, it’ll be harder to challenge the myth, even if gifts like the knowledge that he quit the ISG because it conflicted with his speaking schedule keep coming. A lot of people seem afraid to do that, although I am not sure why.

  • Maybe you’re right, Brian, but I understood Giuliani’s background was in law. It’s true he was a political EMPLOYEE, and it’s also true he rose as high as Associate Attorney General, but he still remained within a fairly narrow band of the political spectrum – law. Being mayor of a city the size of New York would qualify as executive experience, true, and I think I said once that he would probably be qualified to run something on the order of a state. However, I’m talking about experience in the Senate or the House. To my knowledge, he doesn’t have any of that.

    However, you’re correct to suggest that he is running on a platform of foreign policy, and boasts an extensive understanding of the terrorist threat based on nothing more than having been mayor of New York City when the planes hit. I could see it if he’d claimed expertise in REACTING to a terrorist attack, but he knows diddly about forecasting or averting one. You are dead right to suggest that should be attacked, and I’m hoping the Democratic challengers have shied away from doing so thus far only because they don’t want to empty their magazines before the campaign properly gets started. It would serve little purpose to shred Giuliani now, then give the attention-deficit electorate nearly a year to forget about it. I still think Giuliani will be the easiest to beat, simply because he’s such a phony – either that, or he’s fallen into the trap of believing his own hype. It should prove fairly simple to gut him closer to the election, purely on his knowledge of foreign policy and the threat, even if the Republican Noise Machine cranks up in support.

  • Will this come back to haunt him. It might hurt him with some conservatives, but as I noted at Liberal Values, “This revelation might hurt Giuliani’s campaign, but it won’t be fatal. There’s a big demand for authoritarian war mongers among Republican primary voters.”

  • Rudee!
    Rudee!
    Rudee!

    I’m voting for Rudee for sure.
    I don’t want to pay ANY taxes at all!

    Not because I hate this country…
    But because I love it!

    Like the name says:

  • “Maybe you’re right, Brian, but I understood Giuliani’s background was in law. It’s true he was a political EMPLOYEE, and it’s also true he rose as high as Associate Attorney General, but he still remained within a fairly narrow band of the political spectrum – law. Being mayor of a city the size of New York would qualify as executive experience, true, and I think I said once that he would probably be qualified to run something on the order of a state. However, I’m talking about experience in the Senate or the House. To my knowledge, he doesn’t have any of that.”

    It seems like I started an argument over semantics, at least in part. So, moving on…

    “However, you’re correct to suggest that he is running on a platform of foreign policy, and boasts an extensive understanding of the terrorist threat based on nothing more than having been mayor of New York City when the planes hit. I could see it if he’d claimed expertise in REACTING to a terrorist attack, but he knows diddly about forecasting or averting one. You are dead right to suggest that should be attacked, and I’m hoping the Democratic challengers have shied away from doing so thus far only because they don’t want to empty their magazines before the campaign properly gets started. It would serve little purpose to shred Giuliani now, then give the attention-deficit electorate nearly a year to forget about it. I still think Giuliani will be the easiest to beat, simply because he’s such a phony – either that, or he’s fallen into the trap of believing his own hype. It should prove fairly simple to gut him closer to the election, purely on his knowledge of foreign policy and the threat, even if the Republican Noise Machine cranks up in support.”

    I agree. As much as I like to think the press isn’t nearly as bad as many think it is, perhaps it’ll live up to the awful reputation it’s acquired. Even if it doesn’t, we should campaign like it does, spreading information about Giuliani to every imaginable source. And as much as I like to think about taking the high minded approach, it’d be nice to run a scorched-earth campaign, particularly for someone who is as much a son of a bitch as Giuliani is. This time, it looks as if the ads will really write themselves.

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