Is Rudy Through?

On Wednesday morning, either Rudy Giuliani or John Zogby is going wake up with a big headache. Running fourth in the state on which he has bet his presidential chances, Giuliani is nonetheless sure he's going to prevail in Florida's Tuesday primary.

"We're going to win this election by getting the vote out," Giuliani said at a pizza parlor in Port St. Lucie yesterday. "If we win here, we're going to win the nomination."

Zogby disagrees. "Giuliani is becoming less and less of a factor," he said yesterday, his poll showing John McCain and Mitt Romney tied at 30 percent, Mike Huckabee at 14 and Giuliani at 13, with only 9 percent of voters undecided.

For Zogby, who missed Hillary Clinton's late surge in New Hampshire, another blown call could be professional suicide, so it's safe to assume that his level of confidence in the Florida figures is high.

If he's right, the Giuliani comedy of errors will end this week. After leading in the national polls for a year and raising tons of money, America's Mayor decided to snooze through the early primary states and stake everything on the Sunshine State and its population of New York retirees.

By the time he started campaigning, Giuliani was caked with mud from scandals over his erstwhile partner Bernard Kerik and police protection for his current wife while he was still married to her predecessor.

Meanwhile, McCain, Romney and even Huckabee had picked up momentum, and in the past week, Giuliani lost a couple more points, perhaps as a result of his retired base reading the New York Times endorsement of McCain, sideswiping Rudy thus: "The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power...Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking."

If Zogby's figures hold up, Giuliani's best move would be to get out and get behind McCain. For a career prosecutor, Attorney General would not be a shabby consolation prize, if he could weather confirmation hearings about the shadowy clients of Giuliani Partners.

Giuliani's Single Slip-Up

Life imitates old movies. On "Meet the Press" today, when asked about recommending Bernard Kerik, his friend of ill fame, to President Bush as director of homeland security, Rudy Giuliani, for the only time in an hour of questioning about multiple counts of public and private misfeasance, admitted he "made a mistake" in not vetting his old friend and associate carefully enough while at the same time claiming good judgment 95 to 99 percent of the time.

Stanley Kubrick did this better and funnier in the 1964 movie, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

Asked by President Merkin Muffley how Gen. Jack D. Ripper, who is about to blow up the world, was not detected as a psychotic by the foolproof "human reliability tests," Gen. Buck Turgidson replies: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

President Giuliani couldn't have said it better.

The Rudy Mud Keeps Rising

With Bernard Kerik as a character witness, Mr. 9/11 is fast becoming the most ethically challenged Presidential candidate since Bill Clinton came on the scene with a reputation as "Slick Willie."

Giuliani's sleight of hand about the hidden tryst fund that had taxpayers underwriting his courtship expenses enhanced his image this week as the guy with a green eyeshade who inspires other poker players to keep cutting the cards and calling for fresh decks.

To explain why hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses for his security, presumably to protect against terrorists in beachwear while the Mayor was courting Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, were buried in accounts of obscure city offices, Giuliani fell back on that old reliable, a "political hit job." It was only done to speed up slow payments from the Police Department, he claims.

Kerik, Giuliani's police commissioner now under federal indictment for tax fraud and corruption, backs his former boss and business partner. “There would be no need for anyone to conceal his detail’s travel expenses,” Kerik insists.

But the current and former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says he knows of no problems with the delay of payments before Giuliani was mayor or afterward.

Blogger Big Tent Democrat, a lawyer, points out related charges that the Mayor's then-mistress, according to a former city official, "used the PD as her personal taxi service," the same practice that led former NY State Comptroller Alan Hevesi to resign as prosecutors were preparing to indict him for felonies over using state employees to chauffeur his wife.

The New York Times, overflowing with Giuliani's truth abuses, did an omnibus piece yesterday about his penchant for "misleading statistics" to claim accomplishments during his tenure as mayor that are "incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong."

In coming weeks, there will be more Giuliani mud, some of it from Manhattan fire fighters over 9/11, much of it no doubt inspired by Fred Thompson's New York Chairman, Alfonse D'Amato aka Sen. Pothole, whose day job is lobbying for the Poker Players Alliance to overturn a federal ban on internet gambling. D'Amato is an expert on sleaze.

At some tipping point, this rising tide of sewage could overwhelm the Republican front runner's campaign. If not, we might have a President to make Bill Clinton look like Snow White.

Will Rudy Be as Bulletproof as Bill Clinton?

As the year began, the Giuliani campaign seemed doomed by its own lost playbook, which listed his liabilities in bullet form: his third marriage after publicly cheating on his second wife; his consulting business with a less-than-sterling partner, Bernard Kerik; his liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control, to say nothing of a New York style that might not charm red-states residents.

Yet here he is at year's end leading in the polls, the cross-dresser darling of the Religious right, with even the redoubtable Frank Rich in his Sunday Times column reduced to citing Judith Regan as the "silver bullet" that might pierce the heart of his campaign.

Not likely. More and more, Rudy is resembling the Bill Clinton of 1992, who (with an assist from you-know-who) survived his Gennifer Flowers scandal and went on to overcome stories of smoking marijuana ("I didn't inhale") and dodging service in Vietnam.

Now, as Hillary Clinton takes flak for not making her First Lady papers public fast enough, Giuliani is skating past complaints about moving 2,100 boxes of documents from his tenure as mayor to his own tax-exempt foundation before turning them back to the city. Only the mildest of questions has been raised about the papers, which include 9/11 records, being "sanitized" for campaign purposes.

After a media makeover, the current Mrs. Giuliani has emerged to make her first political speech, to an audience of cancer advocates, describing her not-then husband's reaction to hearing the news about his own in 2000.

The campaign's Southern strategy has worked well enough to bring Pat Robertson on board, even after having to dump Louisiana Sen. David Vitter of D.C. Madam fame and a South Carolina chairman accused of dealing cocaine.

After all this and more mishaps, any Judith Regan revelations from her pillow talk with Kerik and about the Murdoch empire's attempts to protect America's Mayor from gossip seem unlikely to derail him.

Only Mitt Romney's money and Iowa voters' orneriness might slow Rudy down. But then again, he could take heart from Bill Clinton's 1992 pattern, when the "Comeback Kid" bypassed Iowa and lost in New Hampshire but still went on to run the table of later primaries and get the nomination.

If the Giuliani campaign needs money, they might want to consider auctioning off signed copies of that lost playbook to die-hard supporters who have faith Rudy will prove it wrong.

Giuliani, Murdoch and Judith Regan

She is making news again, this time claiming Rupert Murdoch's people asked her to cover up an affair with Bernard Kerik to protect Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions. It's vintage Judith Regan to tie her own interests, this time in a lawsuit against Murdoch, to the headlines.

The charge comes at the start of a 70-page filing for $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at Harper Collins and its parent company, News Corporation.

Before she was famous, Regan sounded me out about writing a book about fatherhood. When I started talking about the complexity of the subject, she cut me off.

"No, no," she said, alluding to her own experience. "It has to be about bastards abandoning their children. The title is 'DaddyWho?'"

After that brief encounter, Regan parlayed her colorful certainty into a notorious career as a book publisher and TV host, most of it under the aegis of Murdoch, a kindred spirit when it comes to eschewing ambivalence.

Now here they are, locked in combat, after Murdoch fired her over O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book, which he had apparently approved but backed off when it provoked widespread outrage.

Regan, the New York Times reports, "had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, 'The Lost Son.' In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers."

Regan has an unerring flair for getting attention and perfect pitch for bad taste. It's a wonder Murdoch ever let her go.

No Whitewater for Giuliani

Is the 9/11 sainthood of America's Mayor too radioactive for opponents to attack?

A headline in today's Washington Post says, "Giuliani Campaign Tries to Minimize Fallout From Kerik Indictment" but so far other Republican Presidential candidates have tiptoed around the subject. As contrast, imagine the reaction if Kerik had been one of Hillary Clinton's closest associates.

"Mitt Romney," the Post reports, "declined to comment on whether Kerik's legal woes might pose a political problem for Giuliani, but he called Kerik's indictment on tax fraud and other charges 'very sad and disappointing.'"

John McCain had former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge at his side when he alluded to Kerik. "Supposedly his mission was to help train Iraqi police. He stayed a couple of months, got up and left," McCain said. "That should have been part of anybody's judgment before they would recommend that individual to be head of the Department of Homeland Security."

Only his campaign manager went any further. "A president's judgment matters," he said in a memo, "and Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly placed personal loyalty over regard for the facts."

Even this tame criticism brought a reaction from Giuliani. “I'd be very surprised if John did that,” he said. “John is a very good friend. I probably have about 20 quotes from John since all of this became public...[describing] me as a hero.” He claimed that not vetting Kerik carefully enough was a "mistake."

Giuliani is talking about the former bodyguard and driver he appointed as Police Commissioner despite reports of mob links and over the objection of half his Mayoral Cabinet in 2000, kept at his side on 9/11 and afterward made a partner of his consulting firm with the slogan of "Integrity, Optimism, Courage, Preparedness, Communication, Accountability."

Giuliani is also the godfather of two of Kerik's children.

In "Leadership," the best-selling book the former mayor wrote in 2002, there is a chapter titled "Surround Yourself With Great People." If there is a sequel, it will have to include advice on "How to Dump and Distance Yourself From Great People Who Have Been Indicted for Corruption."

So far Giuliani has been masterful at that aspect of 21st century leadership.

Front Runners Hear Footsteps

Weeks before primary voting in The Election That Looked Like It Would Never Come, front runners in both parties are losing some of their luster.

Yesterday's indictment of Bernard Kerik may finally slow down Giuliani's broken-field running toward the Republican nomination. He won't swivel-hip away as effortlessly from the corruption of his post-9/11 business partner as he has from abortion, gun control, gay rights and multiple marriages. Conservatives, burned by so many crooks in Congress, may balk at iffy integrity in the White House.

In Iowa, Rudy's woes give new hope to Mitt and his money, Fred Thompson's sleepy stumping, John ("I was right about Iraq") McCain, and there could a perfect storm brewing for Mike Huckabee, moving up in the polls and fund-raising, who's getting praise from Bush's former favorite speech writer and is about to reel in his first Religious Right whale, James Dobson.

To the left, Barack Obama has finally found his campaign voice, competitive if not combative, and Hillary Clinton's national lead is narrowing. New Hampshire polls next week will show a closer race and in Iowa, it's a tight three-way with John Edwards, who could now claim residence there, not far behind.

Signs of Clinton concern abound: being caught planting questions, setting up still another web site to counter attacks, the former President trying to deflect blame for the 1993 health fiasco away from his First Lady.

His emergence was prompted by Obama's needle that "part of the record she’s running on is having worked on health care" while also suggesting "that somehow she doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it didn’t work.”

Not exactly brass knuckles, but Obama is beginning to blend the politics of hope with some nimble in-fighting, pointing out that "to say there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have hasn’t been paying attention.”

Voters are beginning to pay attention. Stay tuned.

Rudy's Albatross

The indictment today of Bernard Kerik promises to be much more than a case of a politically incorrect crony that Rudy Giuliani can fob off as easily as he has shed so much of the past in his campaign.

America's Mayor has already admitted a "mistake" in recommending his old friend for the Bush Cabinet position of Director of Homeland Security, but there are booby traps galore in the history of their post-9/11 partnership, Giuliani-Kerik, which was paid millions of dollars for advising companies, doing federal work and consulting with clients overseas.

In 2006, Giuliani's former Police Commissioner pled guilty to ethics violations after an investigation by the Bronx District Attorney's Office and was ordered to pay $221,000. Today's announcement will be, according to the New York Times, that a grand jury has voted to indict Kerik "on conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and substantive counts of wire and mail fraud, under a statute often used in corruption cases, according to people briefed on the vote."

The unveiling of Kerik's history promises a pattern of corruption, and Giuliani is going to have to do a lot better than throwing his former partner and best friend off the bus with a political shrug.

It has opened a garbage can of worms about Giuliani's amassing of millions from his 9/11 aura with such intensity that he couldn't find time to serve on the Iraq Study Commission.

Voters are going to be asking who will protect them from the man who is promising to protect America from foreign terrorists.