Media Matters for America says what's important about the leaked Giuliani campaign playbook isn't how it got into the hands of the New York Daily News, but what it says about media coverage of the race so far. Says Media Matters for America:
Major papers and the broadcast news networks have either ignored or downplayed the "personal and political baggage" identified by the staff of former New York City mayor and presumptive 2008 Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani in a document that lays out his plan for a "bid for the White House."
Do you think that's true? I don't. The report didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about Giuliani's "personal and political baggage." I knew about his three marriages, his messy divorce from his second wife, and his liberal stance on social issues. Have the media ignored or downplayed those issues? I don't think so - after all, Giuliani isn't even officially in the race yet. And most Americans aren't really focused on the '08 presidential race just yet.
There is plenty of time for the media to air Giuliani's personal and political baggage, and rest assured they will.
And when they do, British newspaper columnist Gerard Baker wonders, what will American voters think? Baker's piece on Rudy Giuliani - "Would America vote for Rudy, warts and all?" - is not to be missed.
Here's a bit of it, though you really should read the whole thing:
A Giuliani candidacy for president has been one of the most talked-about political prospects almost from the day the twin towers fell. Images of the stoical, unwearied mayor, his face caked in grime and etched in tragedy became a symbol of that day and an instant metaphor for real leadership in the face of unimaginable horror.
Though 9/11 was his finest hour it is not his only claim on larger political office. As mayor for eight years, whose name is synonymous with the zero-tolerance approach to urban crime-fighting, Mr Giuliani is generally credited for the sharp reduction in serious crime in New York in the 1990s.
If that was all there was to Mr Giuliani, the race for the Republican nomination would be over already. Early opinion polls certainly suggest he is highly popular. But as Aristotle or Shakespeare could tell you, heroes are always more complex than that. Should Mr Giuliani run, his opponents and the national media will ensure that his flaws receive plenty of attention.
His biggest political problem is that he has views that do not conform to modern Republicanism - a big obstacle in a primary contest where candidates must first win the votes of their own partisans. He is firmly in favour of abortion rights, gay marriage and embryonic stem-cell research.
The Giuliani strategy for neutralising this problem seems to be an uneasy combination of tilting gently towards the right in his most recent public statements on these subjects, while championing a form of libertarian conservatism. This is an honourable but somewhat lost political philosophy in America that says government should confine itself to defending its citizens from internal and external threats and otherwise get out of their lives. It may be due for a political comeback, especially as the public seem to be tiring of the hectoring certainties of evangelical conservatives.
But even if Mr Giuliani can pull this off, he faces other formidable challenges. He has what is generally described, in one of the more overworked euphemisms of the age, as a “colourful” private life.
You really should read the whole thing.
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