When you’re running around on your wife
You usually have to answer to your conscience, your kids, your wife and maybe her attorney. If your faith requires, you may have to answer to a cleric or a God. It’s an entirely separate matter when you insist on being accompanied by a security detail, you’re billing taxpayers for that, and the bills are quietly being paid out of several separate accounts, which lends an appearance of a coverup.
While some are welcome to make judgments about a politician’s personal life, I always am most interested in their public performance. If they’ve performed well as an employee, I’ll overlook personal behavior as long as it’s clearly not some felonious behavior. If their public performance has been poor or marginal, I might take the personal behavior into account and vote against such a public servant. Substandard performance plus substandard character issues is not an appealing combination.
But it’s a completely different matter when your personal life is also weighing on the public wallet. If I had an employee who used petty cash to grab a taxi home for a kid’s birthday party, I might consider that worth a verbal warning, but be generally understanding and unworried about the offense. Requiring a security detail to be paid, fed, transported and sheltered overnight isn’t petty cash. Doing that and doing it repeatedly is not acceptable, even if the employee is unmarried and pursuing a healthy, aboveboard loving relationship that hurts no one. Keeping such expenditures hidden is not a matter of security. It’s a matter of deceit.
Misuse of public funds, plus receipt, plus repetition are serious matters deserving disciplinary action and sometimes prosecution. Taxpayers don’t agree that security personnel are hired to perform in such circumstances. And the appearance of a coverup makes it even more serious.
The public has every right to insist upon a full investigation and pass judgment on the defective performance if such transgressions have occurred.
Rudy Giuliani believes he has the qualifications to serve as the most powerful public employee in the world. But if he misused funds and personnel, as it appears he may have, I think it disqualifies him from any higher office. And, should an investigation reveal he did those things, I trust most of America will prevent his election as President. not because he fell in love with another woman, but because he violated rules of conduct we have every right to expect him to adhere to. Those accounts are paid by taxpayers and the personnel involved have a specific limited service to perform.
If Rudy crossed those lines, he can kiss his presidential aspirations goodbye and live with the consequences of his bad decisions.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
If THIS is what finally kills Rudy’s political aspirations dead, good. But we have to note that the mother-f***er seems to have way, way more than nine lives. Kerik hasn’t killed him. The fact that LIKE KERIK, Rudy had his own love-shack near Ground Zero (the REAL reason the freaking bunker was in the target), resulting in countless needless 9-11 deaths, along with the sweetheart Motorola contract that killed so many firefighters, hasn’t finished him off. Part of what should, by rights, finish Rudy off– the fact that the firemen will turn on him… instead is brushed off by the right-wing-media-Republican-love-machine. Surprise, surprise.
The Repubs seem to love Rudy. Not for 9-11. Because in the end, alone among the major 4, Rudy is a hardened, confirmed racist (McCain for Chrissakes has an African American adopted kid… the REAL reason his own party doesn’t trust AND HATES him.) Rudy, on his third wife, and doubtless cheating on her too, is the darling of the family values party. [Of course, note the fast risin’ Huckabee, who, as good-old-boy gov’nor of Arkansas no less, and follows the good old racist code by having joined Tancredo in renouncing the theory of evolution (for real Republicans, Darwinism is no good unless its SOCIAL and economic Darwinism)…]
Even still, any of the other GOPers can be abided except uber-creep Rudy… the true fascist heir to the current crop of creeps.
Please God this particuluar outrage finally finishes him off. Not how I’d bet at all of course (for Rudy, among Republicans, every bug seems to be a feature… see above re: racist; Louima, Abner; Dorismond, Patrick; Diallo, Amadou, etc., Still we can at least hope this finishes off Rudy the creep anyway.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
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November 29th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I don’t believe it will finish his campaign immediately, TD. Instead, it should be more like the beginning of the end. After all, Mitt’s always had the Bush family backing, so he’s been a no-brainer finalist all year. Huckabee’s rise, esp after last night’s performance, should start moving Rudy into third place everywhere but NY and Florida.
But the bottom line here is whether NY City conducts a thorough investigation to determine if any of it was out of line. This, combined with the firefighters complaints, will ultimately sink him. His associations with unsavories won’t, as many presidents have had bad associations… think Baker, Rebozo, etc.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Jane Kaczmarek Cum…
Jane Kaczmarek Cum…