Slide talk

As she strove to justify her claim that she should continue to seek the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton got herself into a heap of trouble with almost everyone — Democrats, Republicans, undeclared delegates, print journalists, an array of columnists in print and on the internet, the expected TV talking heads, and of course bloggers — for what might be minimally characterized as an injudicious reference to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

At first reluctant to join the made-for-opinion pile-on because it would be too easy, I thought about it a little harder and soon realized how few of her critics seemed to have noticed that her argument was completely flawed.

Hillary had told the editorial board of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where one of the last two Democratic primaries was to take place June 3rd, that it was completely reasonable for the contest to go into June because, “You know my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June,” she said.

But it’s apples and bananas. It’s a false analogy. Back in the day we would have called it “slide talk.” Different from spinning — offering the best possible interpretation of something — or lying, slide talk is telling the truth in such a way designed to manipulate or give a false impression.

In 1992, California didn’t hold its presidential primary until June. In 1992 Bill Clinton held the lead, though not the lock, on delegates until the California primary voters clinched the nomination for him in June. In short, in 1992 the process wasn’t quite done until then.

In a December 2007 conversation with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Mrs. Clinton agreed with him that the process has become much more compressed since 1992, as various states moved their primaries up in the hope of wielding more influence.

One of those states was California; from 1996 through 2004, Californians voted in March, but then moved up again to February for the 2008 election.

In other words, the process Hillary Clinton has been talking about was really pretty much all over on this year’s Super Tuesday, February 5th, when 24 states including California held their primaries.

And in that December 2007 conversation, she had said, “We are competing everywhere through February 5th. … I’m in it for the long run. It’s not a very long run — it’ll be over by February 5th!”

No, ma’am, there is no valid comparison between where we’ll be in June this year with where we were in June of 1992, and I’m disappointed that this point has not been made in the general commotion about her remarks.

As for the part of her statement that drew most of the attention, it was her intent, she explained, simply to offer examples of campaigns that ran into June: “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Do we? I remember that it was California, where I lived at the time, and I remember where I was when the news broke, and I remember the despair that swept the country. But that it was June?

And can it be that an intelligent, well-informed person with 35 years of political experience really couldn’t think of any other such contest between 1968 and 1992? Or didn’t have the sense to stop with the 1992 example?

Remember: California’s primary this year was in February.

No, this is a woman who does not make an unplanned remark, who calculates every statement down to the punctuation marks. She said what she meant to say, and in true Clintonian fashion apologized — sort of — later.

“The jury will disregard that remark” popped into my mind. That’s shorthand in some circles for a trial lawyer’s tactic of eliciting inadmissible testimony that is certain to cause his opponent to object, after which the judge sternly informs the jury that it must pretend the remark was never heard. Right.

But if in fact Mrs. Clinton truly misspoke so grave an allusion, then she is clearly unqualified to serve in the one office in the land where such an error may bring disastrous consequences for the country.

Toilet bowl effect

In 1914, two years before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, a collection of articles by the esteemed Louis D. Brandeis was published under the title, Other People’s Money — And How the Bankers Use It. It was a sensation.

In 1991, after a successful run on Broadway, “Other People’s Money,” a play by Jerry Sterner, became a movie featuring Danny DeVito as a ruthless liquidator of moribund businesses.

In a monologue that has since acquired almost a cult following, DeVito’s character
explains to the stockholders why it would be foolhardy to try to keep their company in business when new technology was going to make it obsolete.

This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here.

It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead, all right. We're just not broke. And do you know the surest way to go broke?

Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market.

Down the tubes. Slow but sure.

You know, at one time there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.

Now, how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?

You invested in a business, and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.

Last week I was complaining to a friend about a comment I’d heard on NPR to the effect that, in the recent Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton had won “the core constituency of the Democratic Party” by taking more of the white, non-college-educated, working class vote than had Obama. I just didn’t see it.

Because I don’t think you can define the “core constituency” of the Democratic Party that way any longer, any more than you can claim the Republican Party base is still mostly made up of rich people.

Whoever Hillary Clinton won in Pennsylvania, the total vote for her was less than half what the most conservative estimates had projected, suggesting that the “white, working class, non-college-educated” voter either is not a certain voter for Hillary or that the proportion of such voters has shrunk — or perhaps both.

“It’s called the toilet bowl effect,” said my friend, going on to illustrate: When a toilet is flushed, a huge volume of water descends into the bowl and then whirls in an ever-shrinking vortex until it’s gone.

Hillary Clinton appears to be capturing an increasing share of a declining constituency, and Democrats would be foolish to take seriously her effort to persuade us that because she can win the “Archie Bunker” vote she must be given the nomination.

Pish and tosh, I say.

A similarly deluded member of the punditocracy reminded us over the weekend that ever since the 1960s (and its civil rights legislation) the only Democrats to win the presidency were from Southern states and he suggested that may still be true.

I’ve got news for him: The South has gone north, so to speak.

I was born and raised to the age of 12 in the South; I have lived in New York, Ohio, and California since then, and now that I am back, I am here to tell you: This is not your father’s Old South.

My experience qualifies me to speak with some authority about Yankee directness and California subtlety; about brazenly liberal folks in San Francisco but not so in some of its suburbs; about racism in New York, in Ohio and in California while better relations now exist between black and white folks in Texas.

And I can state unequivocally that one of the best things about the South, what I think of as the “dear hearts and gentle people factor” hasn’t gone north; it’s still very much here, thank you.

So, just as the Democratic Party can take heart that the “white, less-college-educated, working class” voter has, in the last 50 years, become less white and more educated; that the “working class” of decades ago have risen in skills and expectations; they will be well advised not to focus a disproportionate share of their money and energies trying to capture an increasing share of what has become a shrinking market.

Is a sore loser inevitable?

It was only a couple of months ago that I suggested in this space that the primary season would soon be upon us, but I never imagined that it might be Texas that would determine the winners!

On the Democratic side, the race is so far too close to call and our primary on March 4th will be significant — when’s the last time you had a chance to vote in a Presidential primary knowing that your vote would actually matter?

I wrote then:

We haven’t seen a lot of the candidates here in Texas, of course, because Texas doesn’t get to vote in a primary until next March, by which time it may be all over.

Wrong!

And then:

What I’d give for the old days of “brokered” conventions!

Maybe wrong again: I should have remembered that old admonition, to be careful what you wish for! It certainly looks like that’s where we are headed, and it’s not pretty.

On the one hand, events have — I believe happily — proven the pundits’ assessment of Clinton “inevitability” to be dead wrong!

On the other, there could be a destructive battle to decide who will seek the presidency on behalf of the Democratic party.

There is already anger and bitterness in the air, mostly, it seems to me, flowing from the Clinton campaign and certain of its supporters demanding, each time they perceive a setback, that some rule or other be changed to their benefit.

The anger is on display when Bill shakes his finger at his audience, when his wife attacks the press for treating her unfairly, and most recently in the form of a screed written by Robin Morgan, a prominent feminist, blaming “sociopathic woman-hating” for what’s going on.

These activities are disturbing because of what they tell us about the candidate. And whether you believe it or not, as tempting as it is to have a candidate who will do anything, change every rule, to defeat the Republican candidate in the fall, it is already settled in the minds of many Democrats that they really, truly, want an end to this kind of politicking.

Clinton’s decision to portray herself as inevitable from the get-go did not work, though it seemed at first it might. It didn’t work for two reasons: The voters turned out not to appreciate the arrogance and sense of entitlement that seemed to underlie it; and Barack Obama turned out to be, as even Bill Clinton acknowledged the other day, the more exciting candidate.

But, she argues, Obama hasn’t been truly “vetted” so no one knows what his opponents might dredge up to throw at him, whereas everyone already knows everything there is to know about her.

Well not quite: There is still the unresolved request for her White House records and tax returns to be disclosed, and the influence of Bill’s rather eclectic business dealings.

In any event, as Barack Obama himself somewhat amusedly pointed out, there is no doubt that whatever can be dug up against him would most likely have been uncovered by the Clintons by now.

Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she will be “ready from Day One in the Oval Office” has always struck me as somewhat peculiar, given that the first day in the Oval Office doesn’t arrive until almost three months after the election — a space in time designed by our better-angel forbears to allow for the smooth transfer of power and plenty of preparation, Cabinet building and the like.

And then there’s Bill. What can I say?

Now, there were some fine accomplishments during the Bill Clinton presidency, most notably a healthy economy, but there were also more some not-so-wonderful events — most notably the failed health care plan and the passage of NAFTA — and more problems than you could shake a stick at, problems no one wants to take on again, not to mention a level of inter-party rancor that does not appear to have faded.

That in mind, Hillary Clinton argues that she is the best qualified to withstand attacks from Republicans because of all that she has endured; what folks need to consider is that those attacks were leveled at the Clintons!

Which means one thing does seem inevitable: If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, and if she were to win the White House — certainly not a certainty — we’d be right back where we left off in 2000, rancor and all.

I don’t see what I believe America needs, and I do see what I believe America most assuredly does not need.

Beginning with early voting on February 19th, Texas now has the rare and remarkable opportunity to change the course of American politics for a good long while. The calculation even by folks in her own campaign is that if Hillary Clinton does not win Texas — and win it big — the race will be over and Barack Obama will secure the nomination.

You can talk all day long about “superdelegates” but the consensus continues to be that Texas can decide the outcome and maybe even help to save the world!

The Clintons constantly deride Barack Obama’s rhetoric as “poetry” contrasted with the “prose” she offers. So a little spin here is irresistible:

“Prose” is the root of “prosaic,” and if Obama is the opposite of prosaic, then, according to the thesaurus, he is extraordinary, imaginative, inspired and inspiring — just what we need in a leader!

Farewell to the Pharisees

It seems to have been proven once again: Money can’t buy you the presidency of the United States of America.

Mitt Romney should’ve learned from Steve Forbes, who spent some $38 million of his own money in each of his two attempts to become president back in 1996 and 2000.

By the time Romney suspended his campaign last week he had spent, according to the folks who do the numbers, approximately $1.16 million — including $35 million or so of his own money — for each of the 286 delegates he won.

Our boy Huckabee, on the other hand, ambling somewhat jovially and much less frenetically along the same campaign trail, has collected some 20 delegates for each $1 million spent so far and 180 or so delegates on board. Imagine if he had even a fraction of Romney’s money!

I find no report of Huckabee putting any of his own money into the mix, and in fact, according to the Washington Post, he continues his pre-campaign career of paid speaking engagements, explaining that “If I don’t work, I don’t eat.”

If I thought there was any likelihood at all that Mr. Huckabee could win the White House, I might be writing to sound the alarm instead of just enjoying the show, if for no other reason than his stated wish to abolish the IRS and add a hefty sales tax to what we buy.

(You think 8.25% is a tough tax to pay? Try thinking about 30%! On every dollar you spend!)

But it’s refreshing to watch Huckabee’s campaign just for the sheer decency and authenticity of it. And his sense of humor really lights up an interview.

Of course, despite his credentials as a Baptist minister and his position on matters they claim to hold dear, the folks I call the Radical Right aren’t having any of it. I have no idea why, other than Huckabee’s unarguably Christian desire to help the poor and worry about middle class jobs.

Even more so, the RR doesn’t care for John McCain. The very conservative senator from Arizona apparently isn’t conservative enough for the likes of Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, despite a long conservative record.

These worthies are so opposed to McCain they have vowed to support Hillary Clinton should he become the Republican nominee.

But this brings to mind the old saw about the dog chasing a car: What would he do if he ever caught it?

What do you suppose would happen if they actually “won” the election? Would they be able to influence events at the White House? Or would they just be out of work?

Imagine, if you will, American society without the Limbaughs and Ingrahams and Coulters, whose stock in trade is hateful speech! Ahhh!

Seriously, it seems obvious to me that the Radical Right has hijacked the concern about social issues that for a long time defined the mostly evangelical portion of the Republican base, in order to promote their own decidedly uncharitable agenda.

They want to cut taxes for the rich. They don’t want campaign finance reform, preferring that rich folks and corporations be allowed to donate unlimited money to campaigns. (They might want to rethink this; see above).

They don’t want any path to citizenship to solve the problem of what to do with 12 million people who came here illegally, no matter how many years ago or how heavy the penalty proposed. They don’t want universal health care. They don’t want to clean up the environment.

Their list is long, but you’ll notice one common denominator: Money.

This election offers the Republican Party an opportunity, whether John McCain or Mike Huckabee is the nominee, to purge itself of the radical element. By winning the nomination in spite of everything those folks have thrown at him, McCain may succeed in marginalizing them; if Huckabee were to amaze everyone and win the nomination, I think the radicals would go the way of the Pharisees:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you devour widows' houses, and pray at length as a pretense.

Political Spin

Let’s just talk about political spin for a moment. And why I hate it.

To “spin” a comment or event is to, literally, twirl it about to make it sound the way you want, so you can use it to win the argument, the day, the election. In some cases, it is a way to turn truth into a convenient lie.

Barack Obama said, last week, in an in-depth interview with the Reno Journal-Gazette editorial board, that the coming election was similar to 1980, when President Ronald Reagan “changed the trajectory” of the country. He explained that in 1980 the voters:

. . . felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think [Reagan] tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

I think most folks would agree with that simple observation.

Obama went on to say that he thought that, for “large chunks of time” over the last 10-15 years, the Republican Party had actually been more a party of ideas than the Democrats, “in that they were challenging conventional wisdom.” He included in this observation that he did not necessarily agree with those ideas.

SPIN TIME: The Clinton campaign immediately trotted out the notion that Barack Obama had spoken “very favorably” of Ronald Reagan, and that Obama had said the Republicans had better ideas. Hillary went on to suggest that Obama must therefore be in favor of privatizing social security, eliminating the minimum wage, cutting healthcare benefits and giving goodies to the pharmaceutical companies. Bill Clinton made it clear he was not happy.

Anyone see a problem with this?

If you agree with the Clinton spin, then I had better not tell you that Mussolini made the trains run on time, or you would think I was a fan of his. And, of course, it I told you that Hugo Chavez has brought radical changes to Venezuela it has to mean I just LOVE what he’s doing to his people.

One of the difficulties in running for office is divining just how your most thoughtful remark might be understood — or misunderstood.

Now, sometimes a little spin is warranted, can be done without lying, and doesn’t really offend anyone.

Take the results of the Nevada caucuses this past weekend.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney did such a walkaway there was nothing left to spin, unless you cared to say it was just because of a huge Mormon turnout, which would not necessarily be the case as he moves along.

And on the Democratic side:

It was a great victory for the Clintons, for whom 51% of the voters declared.

It was a great victory for Barack Obama, who came from behind to win 13 delegates to Hillary’s 12!

All true. Quite spinnable. No harm, no foul. No lies.

And no clear winner, apparently, since the State party chairman has pointed out that everything could change at their county and state conventions!

Golly, those people get to have all the fun!

The Clintons don't make mistakes, do they?

Thinking about the Obama-Clinton race, it occurs to me that the more folks become familiar with Clinton, the less they think of her as a woman, and the more they get to know Obama, the less they think of him as black. Voters are getting past the novelty and into the serious business of character and issues.

And with this development has come, just in the last few weeks, a drip, drip, drip of remarks by one or the other Clinton or Clinton aide that cannot fail to remind us that Obama is black, even as other seemingly random events and behavior cannot fail to remind us that Hillary Clinton is a woman.

Now, far be it for me to suggest that the Clintons (yes, there are two of them running) would be so calculating as to make this happen, but it’s hard to dismiss, given what we know of them. Consider this:

If I’m right and the voters are beginning to look past race and gender, and the Clintons worry about that because they want to be sure (a) women vote for a woman and (b) primary voters go back to worrying about whether a black man can win in the general election, they sure don’t want them to forget her gender and his race, right?

Tell you the truth, from the ambiguity of Bill’s calling some of Obama’s campaign statements a “fairy tale,” and Hillary’s assertion that President Johnson was the only reason Martin Luther King, Jr. accomplished anything, to the scurrilous remarks by Robert Johnson, whose gifts to the black community have included bringing "gangsta rap" to his BET audiences, the inevitable criticism and reaction from the African-American community further serves to remind voters that Barack Obama is, indeed, black. Unintended consequences? I think not.

Now, I don’t think for a minute that either of the Clintons is a racist, and I’ll defend them on that point forever.

But I am easily persuadable that a scheme to remind voters to worry about Obama’s race is, well — Clintonian.

Nothing wrong with the polls!

I am perfectly satisfied with the analysis offered on Keith Olbermann's Countdown a couple of days after the election. He and Craig Crawford, of Congressional Quarterly, went through the numbers, and if I recall them more or less correctly, it came out that the percentage of the vote predicted for Obama (between 34 and 38) was just about right — he landed at 36%.

The number that was wrong, that had been forecast for Clinton, was 28%, obviously low. But then the number of UNDECIDED or MIGHT CHANGE votes was over 40% or so.

Looks like the majority of those broke for Clinton, maybe because of tears, maybe because of sympathy, etc., or maybe just because a lot of Clinton voters held back until the last minute. And it's reported that lots of those were women over 45 who (anecdotally) felt HRC had been mistreated.

Some independents who voted for McCain did so, they said, to stop Romney, but only after they were assured by the polls that Obama had it nailed. That would explain McCain's unexpectedly high numbers.

In the end, the POLLS weren’t to blame — the interpreters were.

Freedom From Misinformation

The proliferation of blogs — do-it-yourself “journalism” on the internet, by anyone with the wit to use a computer (and some with only that) — and the ability to generate a flood of emails at the drop of a “SEND” button have brought the art of whisper campaign to a new level. Everyone gets to play, but the game afoot is not fun or funny and can be devastating.

When John Kennedy ran for President in 1960 an anonymous telephone call was making the rounds: “Here’s to the three K’s — Kennedy, Catholicism and Communism!” Lovely KKK subtext, right? Or perhaps the caller’s spelling skills were to blame, but the message was clear.

In the early spring of 2000, John McCain, an altogether honorable person considered by some to be a hero, was doing very well in the Republican primaries. Most respectable journalists and political operatives agree that it was Karl Rove who arranged for a telephone campaign of gossip against McCain that most of said journalists and politically savvy folks blame for his loss to George Bush in South Carolina, an event that may well have affected the history of America.

Now it is much easier, takes very little time, and costs nothing to whisper dirt to prospective voters, and someone opposed to Barack Obama’s run for the presidency began a while back to do just that. It’s not clear which came first, the emails or the article in Insight Magazine, a Washington Times (think Reverend Moon) publication, but that’s all it took to permeate the internet and leap onto Fox News.

Last week, the Washington Post published a story about it all.

Now, even though the rumors the Post chose to publish may not have warranted publication as news, it can be argued that sometimes the truth isn’t as evident as we would like, and if a reporter feels obliged to dig deep into a rumor in search of truth he may well find something interesting. (On the other hand, if we examine our tap water with a microscope we might forswear the drink forever rather than ingest the wildlife therein.) In any case, the reporter must likewise feel obliged to use judgment, or at least some common sense, in deciding whether it has value.

Given the easy fact-checking available to just about anyone, especially a reporter for a major newspaper with access to Lexis-Nexis, it is hard to justify the perpetuation of any rumor. Heck, even snopes.com had the Obama lies nailed a year ago.

I won’t deny it might be newsworthy to say “there’s this falsehood being spread by so-and-so, and we have checked and determined its origin and the apparent reason behind it,” but the Washington Post made it a front-page story, spending some 1500 words to tell us it about a rumor promulgated by Obama’s enemies.

(In fact, it turned into a two-fer for the political right, which claimed that Hillary Clinton was behind it!)

Rumor and innuendo have become too influential in our lives, notwithstanding the amusement provided by misbehaving glamour-girls whose function in society seems to be just that. The line between news we need and innuendo is hard to fathom, just when it is so important that we get it right — as in a presidential campaign — and I believe it is the responsibility of every reporter to unblur that line.

That includes getting rid of “gotcha” journalism on televised interviews, usually starring the famous-journalist-as-Perry Mason, more interested in demonstrating how cleverly and in how many ways he can posit a question that still won’t be answered if the subject chooses not to. There is no discovery here, no illumination for the viewer, just the impression that information has been gleaned when in fact only inferences may be drawn from nothing more than implications. It has been reported that if we ask you whether you’ve stopped beating your wife, sir, you’ll deny that you ever did. Do you care to comment?

The question of how to approach and report news is as old as the business itself. A cigar-chomping old-school city editor, under whose tutelage I suffered awhile, insisted on the importance of the right “lede” — the opening sentence of a story — to insure that the reader will be interested enough to read the whole story. He was right. But a lede, or a headline for that matter, can also set the stage, or mood, or predisposition of the reader/viewer to interpret the whole story in a certain way.

In the Washington Post report, the headline was: Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him. Later in the piece, the reporter wrote: “Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a ‘Muslim plant’ in a conspiracy against America,” and then, still later, “The rumors about Obama have been echoed on Internet message boards and chain e-mails.”

Conspicuously missing: Even one sentence stating that the reporter had checked the story and determined it to be completely unfounded. It wasn’t until a post-publication exchange with critics that he used the word “falsehood.” Rumor 1, Truth 0.

Another tough question: When shall we report the news in an historical context that may well leave the reader/viewer with a different impression than if we had reported just the facts of a given event?

If, for example, when reporting that in 2003 Rudy Giuliani married his longtime girlfriend, it would not be appropriate to dig up and publish information about his previous marriage or even marriages, unless it is information clearly related to his qualifications to be president. Knowing that Judi Nathan was his girlfriend a long time before Rudy told his wife, indirectly by way of press conference, that he wanted a divorce, might provide relevant information about his character.

Finally, an issue that still drives me wild: Shall the interviewer let stand a comment by his subject that he knows or suspects to be untrue?

Leaving unchallenged some assertion that the reporter knows to be based on misinformation or, in some cases, an outright lie, allows the statement to live on in the final publication or broadcast, there to become part of the information passed on to the public. It seems to me that in these cases the reporter has at least a responsibility to ask, “Can you prove that? Please tell me where our viewers/readers can confirm that.”

If all else fails, then the reporter, interviewer or editor may still employ the time-honored tradition of the editorial comment, to foil mendacious mischief-makers. Wild accusations should never be allowed to stand.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed by our Constitution, and is critical to the preservation of our democracy. It seems self-evident to me that journalists or editors who recognize an item incorrectly offered as “fact” — whether simply mistaken or mean-spirited in origin — have an obligation to prevent its dissemination or perpetuation and to intercept and reveal untruths.

It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak, and another to hear. - Thoreau

Sauce for the Gander

Last week in this space I wrote about the importance of paying close attention to each candidate as the primary season moves along, because what you see can be a really good indicator of what you would get.

On the other hand, especially in politics it seems, what you see or hear may cleverly mask reality, usually because the reality might also be called the unpleasant truth.
The “Healthy Forests Initiative” comes to mind, designed as it was to expand private logging access to old-growth trees in federal forests.

Since my comments last week on the upcoming primary election focused on the putative front-runner in the Democratic race, it seems only fair to now talk about the man the pundits tell us is the Republican front-runner.

And in this case what you see is most definitely not what you get.

I have to admire, in a way, a person whose aura is so strong as to overcome everything and everyone in the room, including an elephant or two (no pun intended).

Imagine yourself at an elegant dinner in a five-star restaurant; the entree has just been set before you, the hundred-dollar bottle of cabernet has proven to be worth every penny, and a guy at the next table lights up a cheap cigar.

When word began to buzz that Rudy Giuliani was thinking about running for President, the pundits all predicted that he would never be accepted in polite society, so to speak, because of his quite liberal views, and that there was no way he could win the nomination of the Republican party.

So here we are, surrounded by the aura of strength, with a candidate who is not what he seems, and not what the country needs.

On the assumption that most non-New Yorkers don’t really know Rudy (funny, isn’t it, how both front-runners have first-name identity), I’d like to offer a short profile here. (This is where I ‘fess up to part of my roots, the formative years spent in New York, whose vestiges have remained; even though I have now lived in Waxahachie twice as long as anywhere else, formative is formative and I have never stopped paying attention to events in the Big Apple.)

Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York was fraught with controversy and cronyism.

There have been terrible decisions, reckless behavior, outright lies, and disastrous judgment in public appointments. Just this week one of his good-buddy appointments, Bernie Kerik, was indicted for tax fraud, corruption, and lying to the White House. (That old saw about judging a man by the company he keeps persists for a reason.)

Terrible decisions: Giuliani was elected mayor soon after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists. Nonetheless, in 1997, despite opposition by wiser folks, he insisted that the city’s emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center. A terrible decision that cost many lives.

Reckless behavior: In May of 2000, then-mayor Giuliani revealed at a press conference that he and Donna Hanover, his wife of 17 years, would be separating. It was a surprise announcement, not least to his wife, to whom he had not yet delivered the news.

At that same time he identified Judith Nathan, with whom he had been frequently seen around town, as “a very good friend.” She later became the current Mrs. Giuliani.

Disastrous judgment: And then, of course, Bernie Kerik, the ol’ buddy pal with past mob connections (that Rudy claims he didn’t know about) and a long trail of scandal before, during and after his appointments by Rudy to important positions such as NYC Police Commissioner. He even got the President to nominate Bernie to head Homeland Security, a nomination soon abruptly withdrawn.

Rudy stayed by his friend through it all, until about six months ago when he began to put some distance between himself and Kerik. About the time he declared for President, actually.

Lies: Giuliani told reporters he spent more time than many first responders in the toxic dusts of Ground Zero after 9/11, enraging the New York City firefighters because it was flagrantly untrue.

And of course Giuliani likes to take full credit for bringing down crime rates in New York while he was mayor, when in fact credit should go to William Bratton who, while he was still head of the New York Transit Police and even before Giuliani appointed him Police Commissioner in 1994 initiated the “quality of life” approach that so dramatically cut crime in the City. (After too many people became aware of his role, Bratton was moved on and out.)

Allow me to pause here to say that as I write all this I feel a little seedy, as if this were some gossip column or worse, even though these facts are out there already. I just think they are relevant in assessing the character and qualifications of a man who would be President of the United States and leader of the free world.

But still, enough. There’s just too much.

In short, the candor and authenticity that voters seem to crave this season are not Rudy’s to offer. Nor is there any evidence that he actually has the “strength” that he claims should qualify him for the presidency.

What he has, as any New Yorker can tell you, is Attitude. Now, I don’t think that Attitude gets you very far with the rest of the world, but hey! You want Attitude? Choose Rudy.

There are several quite honorable, worthy and even honest men running for the Republican nomination, but Rudy Giuliani is not one of them.

I will agree, though, that he seems to be really effective at reassuring folks AFTER a disaster, so perhaps the next president will consider him to head up FEMA.