The Return Of Rudy

You'd think that when you embarrassed yourself so totally as a Presidential candidate, possibly running the worst campaign in modern history, you'd spend the rest of the year in hiding, dodging the laughter of children on the street. But not so for Rudy Giuliani, who has decided to reappear as a surrogate for John McCain on national security. The ensuing reaction from the Obama campaign and the DNC almost makes me wish that St. 9-11 had won the GOP nomination.

The Obama campaign and the DNC struck back at Giuliani for criticizing Obama for pointing out the handling of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial as an example of how to deal with terrorists in American courts.

In an e-mail, entitled, “Giuliani v Giuliani: 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Case,” the Obama campaign points out that in 1993, Giuliani said at the time, per the New York Times, March 5, 1994: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared that the verdict ‘demonstrates that New Yorkers won't meet violence with violence, but with a far greater weapon -- the law.’”

Also from that day’s Times: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he hoped that the verdicts would lessen tensions rather than increase them. ‘It should show that our legal system is the most mature legal system in the history of the world,’ he said, ‘that it works well, that that is the place to seek vindication if you feel your rights have been violated.’”

The DNC takes its shot at Giuliani with an e-mail with a title, parroting Joe Biden’s Greatest Debate Hits: “Rudy, ‘Noun, verb, 9/11’ Giuliani returns.”

“Democrats are not going to be lectured to on security by the mayor who failed to learn the lessons of the 1993 attacks, refused to prepare his own city’s first responders for the next attack, urged President Bush to put his corrupt crony in charge of our homeland security, and was too busy lobbying for his foreign clients to join the Iraq Study Group,” DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said. “Rudy Giuliani, can echo the McCain campaign’s false and misleading attacks, but he can’t change the fact that John McCain is promising four more years of President Bush’s flawed and failed policies on everything from energy security and the economy to the war in Iraq.”

TPM Election Central has been digging up quotes all day from McCain advisers who repeatedly suggested during the primaries that he failed New York City on 9-11 and that he has no revelant national security experience whatsoever. It's been fun.

I don't think the McCain camp expected Rudy to get pounded so effortlessly. But since the campaign, the bloom is WAY off that rose.