Giuliani struggles to keep his story straight

November 3, 2007

One of the oddities of the presidential campaign this week has been the tit-for-tat between Joe Biden and Rudy Giuliani. Biden, struggling badly in the race, seems to have settled on hammering Giuliani as a new campaign strategy. Giuliani, ostensibly the GOP frontrunner, seems to believe every challenge deserves a rapid response.

The result has been surprisingly entertaining. I’ll concede that Biden is far from my favorite Democratic hopeful, but he’s certainly helping himself and the party by looking past the Democratic top tier and directing his attention at the former NYC mayor.

Ordinarily, you’d expect the GOP leader to ignore a struggling second-tier Dem, but Giuliani is swinging wildly at Biden. So wildly, in fact, that he’s making himself appear pretty foolish.

Here’s Giuliani questioning Biden’s foreign-policy experience.

“It’s one thing to speak about what you want or even pass laws about it. It’s another thing to actually do it. Foreign policy experience to me means being an ambassador, being in the state department.”

And here’s Giuliani, a few hours later, saying the opposite about Biden.

“I didn’t mention foreign policy.”

The irony, of course, is that Giuliani has about as thin a foreign-policy resume as any major presidential candidate in the modern era. Biden, meanwhile, is the chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and has decades of experience on these issues. Why Giuliani thinks this is a fight he wants to have is a reminder that this guy is a buffoon of legendary proportions.

As for Biden, he’ll probably never get a realistic shot at the Democratic top tier, but the more he makes Giuliani look ridiculous, the better off he’ll be as a candidate.

Not necessarily. It could just be that, from watching the media (and, alas, the voting public) ever since the furor about Watergate died down, he has learned – probably correctly – that facts don’t matter. Hell, Biden could have been an ambassador, and Giuliani could have been mayor of What Cheer, Iowa on 9/11, RooDee would probably still say the same thing. And why not (I mean, aside from morals and propriety, but we’re talking Giuliani here) if outright lying works? If you polled a statistically relevant random sample of Americans today and asked “who do you believe has more foriegn policy experience, Republican Rudy Giuliani or Democrat Joe Biden?” I would bet $49 (maximum casual gaming limit here) that Giuliani wins, and I’d think about giving you points. As long as it fits a preexisting meme and the media isn’t willing to intervene to correct it, a lie not only works, it takes scary-little time for it to become the “truth.”

  • The real story here is Giuilani showing himself to be the incredibly thin-skinned, vindictive and dishonest SOB we New Yorkers remember all too well. He has absolutely no capacity to let a perceived slight or challenge go unanswered, despite the fact that even responding to Biden makes him look silly (and never mind that Biden probably excretes more foreign policy acumen every day than Rudy’s ever possessed). Though he gains nothing and potentially loses much–not least because by any objective standard, Biden’s expertise advantage is so enormous–he just can’t help himself. A jerk’s gotta be a jerk.

    One of the most famous examples of Giuliani’s mix of insecurity and megalomania came about ten years ago, when New York magazine ran a series of ads on NYC buses calling itself “possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for.” What did he do? He ordered the ads taken off the buses. But a federal court ruled that the ads were constitutionally protected political satire.

    It’s just who he is.

  • Dajafi***thanks for posting that key insight into Guiliani’s personality, it’s hysterical. Rudy is such a joke as a candidate that I still find it hard to believe that republicans can ignore everything about him and cling to a fantasy of what they want him to be instead of what he is.

    And then the press just goes..”hm-hmm, hm-hmm, thank you Mr. Guiliani.” Never smoething like…” just what foreign experience, actual experience have you ever had. Isn’t it true you resigned from the Iraq study group because it interfered with your paid speaking appearances? Is that the extent of your prior interest in foreign policy, that when you had the opportunity to study and help determine policy it was just inconvenient for you to do so?” The press is usually dumber than Guiliani and incapable of calling him on his lies and exaggerations until it is pointed out to them and by then they’ve already let it all go by. Just pathetic.

  • bjobotts, there are many such stories about Giuliani.

    And while I’m pretty clearly no fan of Hillary Clinton, I will say that in terms of “campaign most likely to leverage the vast material of embarrassing Giuliani material,” I have more confidence in her crew of flunkies and flying monkeys than any of the other camps. (Zeitgeist, there’s my “votes for Hillary scenario. Probably the only one, for what that’s worth, but were my choice between Bush and Rudy, I might well vote for Bush.)

  • dajafi suggests a discouraging question. A while ago, I was horrified to realize that I’d vote for Nixon in a heartbeat if the choice was Nixon or George II. Now, which of the current Republican candidates rises clearly above the low, low standard set by Bush? What a lot of bleak choices.

  • …[Biden]’s certainly helping himself and the party by looking past the Democratic top tier and directing his attention at the former NYC mayor.

    I just had a thought that came from out of nowhere. I’ve always wondered why people would want to run for the Presidency when it was obvious from the get-go they didn’t have a chance of winning. I concluded that people ran anyway, just to get visibility in the land of politics. In the past, elections haven’t seemed to depend on anything but voting, but I’m not sure that’s true anymore. I’ve recently become aware of how strong a hand hidden forces (the DCCC and big business in the Democratic race) have in who the final candidates are.

    What if all the candidates know the one who’s going to get the nomination from the get-go, and all are merely the “setting” for the one who’s going to “win”. So they all spend millions on campaigning, giving the winner the best exposure and show. Rudy Giuliani is the best the Republicans can find? He’s wacko, and if he’s the Republican frontrunner, something weird is going on. What if the parties put up the best-looking fight they can for public consumption but the party deal’s already been made… And during the last eight years, the election results seem to have been provided for before people even voted.

    I dunno. I guess I’m completely paranoid after the last 7 years of seeing how easily the US government can be corrupted and how little effect the voting seems to have had on the presidential elections.

  • And if Biden, whom I like as well or better than the other Dems, can hammer on the Repoconletts with intellegence and facts, he will put himself in a great position for consideration as VP or maybe Sec. of State.

    That is assuming that Democrats don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, which they are trying very hard to do.

  • If Joe Biden doesn’t win, it will have nothing to do with Joe Biden. It will be because of America’s inability to look past their own noses and see whats out there. Joe has been saying forever that he is not interested in the VP or S. of State job. He is not doing this for fame, he is one of the most powerful people in the world.(Chairmen of the Senete Foreign Relations). Yet, still uninformed people like Marnie say what she just said. I’m going to let you on a little secret, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Chirs Dodd or the only ones running who are qualified to be President. Everyone else is as big of a joke as Rudy. Wake up everyone, its like an episode of the Twilight Zone in this country.

  • Really Josh? Then how come Biden continually shoots himself in the foot? Plaigerized speeches? check. Arguably racist backhanded compliments? check.
    No one did those to Joe, he did those – and has done scores of others – all to himself because he far too often starts his mouth before his brain is engaged, or keeps his mouth running after his brain is shut off. I’ll completely agree with you that he has the raw intellect and experience, but the temperment and discipline are another matter altogether. Biden’s love of his own voice is his worst enemy. Think of his performance in pretty well any Congressional hearing (where he has been known to use all of his allotted time with the preface, leaving none for his question) and you’ll see what I mean.

  • (oh, and Josh, don’t even get me started on what listng McCain as qualified does to your credibility – and others here can poind on McCain a lot harder than I can. McCain is a senile bad joke.)

  • Anney, your comments are just what my mom has been saying for a few years..that it is all set up by some group(whom I don’t have a clue). “They” pick the candidate and the rest is all for show. Personally I don’t know if she is right or not. Just one of those thoughts….

  • ***Giuliani … is a buffoon of legendary proportions.***

    Fortunately, Ringling Brothers usually makes their winter swing up the East Coast right around the time of next year’s election. RooDee can run away after his “mother of all landslides” thrashing and join the circus. I’m sure there’s a place at Ringling Brothers for a two-faced clown. He can be both the clown throwing the pie—and the clown receiving it.

    RooDee even has his own costume—and his own makeup, too. I saw him in it one day, in a commercial with Donald Trump….

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