Giuliani for President?

Rudy Giuliani (Wikipedia)

While the hysteria around the presidential election is already getting old (and it's only March), I thought I would throw in my 2 cents about a candidate being talked about a lot by the media. While I hesitated at first to do this post because I feel that this man deserves little face time in the news (I thought he used up all of his 15 minutes after 9/11), I read an article today about him that really kind of summed him up.

CNN.com today reported that Giuliani's law firm is doing business on behalf of CITGO, the Venezuelan-owned (and thus controlled by Hugo Chavez) oil company. Now Giuliani insists that he has nothing to do with the deal, but his name is on the firm's letterhead, and thus he does have something to do with it.

So I guess that this means that Giuliani can talk a good game, but flash some green in his face (to the tune of about $250,000), and all of that rhetoric about how Chavez is not "a friend of the United States" is thrown out of the window. Now would be a time to type into Google define: hypocrite.

Additionally, Giuliani was not a good mayor, but people tend to completely forget this because of the final days of his term. Jack Newfield describes this in his excellent biography of Giuliani called "The Full Rudy" in which he goes through the mayor's terms in office and his policy decisions.

Through the Brooklyn Museum of Art debacle, the numerous police shootings and murders, and the downright bull-headedness of the man, it is apparent that he is not an appropriate choice to run a large city of 8 million, never mind a country of 300 million. The book describes Rudy's style of taking everything related to policy decisions personally, at one point quoting someone close to the mayor as saying that he has "to prove that he has the biggest dick in the room."

But don't take just one person's word for it. Let's look at the people who have been the closest to him throughout his life, such as his children. As CNN.com reported, Rudy is estranged from both of his children with former wife Donna Hanover. His son, Andrew, said that he must focus on his golf game and "even if he wanted to" help his father, he would not have the time. The man is a jerk.

I just want people to look at the facts - namely the man's performance before 9/11 as mayor of New York City. We cannot let (relatively) recent events cloud our memories when it comes to Rudolph Giuliani. The past two elections we have had less than mediocre candidates, and if Giuliani is selected as the Republican candidate, then this country has some major issues. Bush and the Republicans have politicized 9/11 and won the 2004 elections off of it, let's not let Giuliani do that in 2008.