Stick a fork in Rudy Giuliani. He's done. His shadow, Bernard Kerik, has also been done for two years, but he is so corrupt it has yet to register in his reptilian mind. Together this charmless pair will sink into the New York City sleaze, settling somewhere near the bones of Boss Tweed and Leona Helmsley,
Seriously, is this the best a major party can do in the way of an alleged "front runner"? Giuliani has more skeletons in his closet than Son of Sam. And his pal Bernard Kerik makes one long for the sweet innocence of a Bernard Goetz. Thrice-married, he deserted one woman who had his daughter in Korea, married three others, then conducted extramarital affairs behind their backs, was convicted of ethics violations and is now facing 16 federal charges of conspiracy, mail and wire fraud and lying.
All you need to know about Kerik, Giuliani's best friend, business partner, hand-picked police chief and nominee for Homeland Security director, is this: while smoke rose from the Twin Towers, he was screwing his publisher, Judith Regan, in an apartment overlooking the rubble that had been set aside for exhausted rescue workers.
But the nuts don't fall far from the Testosterone Tree at Club Giuliani. Where to begin with the scandals that are hovering over his head? For six years he has exploited 9/11 for personal financial enrichment. As Sen. Joe Biden recently put it in a debate, "There are only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11." (To which Giuliani responded, "Biden has never run anything but his mouth.").
Since Giuliani left the mayor's office he has made connections, through his Giuliani Partners, that have, according to the Associated Press, "exposed him to a wide range of potential ethical entanglements." Giuliani's client list includes tobacco companies; the makers of Oxycontin; and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the ultimate in gall, given that 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9/11 were Saudi and given that Giuliani—for the post-9/11 cameras—turned down a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince, contemptuously refusing to deposit the check. The Village Voice's Wayne Barrett last week, in fact, reported that one of Giuliani Partners' clients is Qatar's internal security ministry, which is headed by Abdallah al-Thani, who has ties with al Qaeda. He not only has met with Osama Bin Laden, he is believed to have helped Khalid Sheikh Mohammed escape from arrest in 1996. Khalid is thought by some to have been the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
As my favorite blogger, digby, put it, "The only things [Giuliani] doesn't take credit for in his speeches are writing the score for Les Mis and inventing the IPod. He's a superhero in his own mind."
But all that Republican-style sleaze no longer matters. The media now has its sex scandal, its semen-stained dress. It has the dirtbag dead to rights. This past week, we learned that Giuliani, while mayor and still married to Donna Hanover, who was living at Gracie Mansion, conducted his affair with Judith Nathan, now his wife. Giuliani used taxpayer money and equipment to facilitate this affair, allowing the use of city cars to chauffeur Nathan and her friends around the city, even providing a separate security detail for her. Kerik, police commissioner, was the enabler in this gambit.
When first confronted by the media about this unusual arrangement in late 2001, Giuliani angrily said, "You should be ashamed of yourselves." That same statement should be leveled at Giuliani and Kerik now. And though it blows my mind to even think this, eight years of Giuliani as president may be enough to make the nation long for the days of George W. Bush.
