Tim Russert's interview with Rudy Giuliani on "Meet the Press" is a perfect reflection of the scandal-driven priorities of the Washington press corps. Guiliani is a top presidential candidate with little knowledge of or experience in foreign policy. Norman Podhoretz, one of his advisers, wants to bomb Iran and thinks Iraq's WMD are in Syria. But what does Russert really care about? We'll let the word count tell the story.
Horse race - 701 words
Iran - 1401 words
Iraq - 539 words
Questionable actions/statements/ethical allegations - 6129 words
Huckabee on homosexuality - 249 words
Balanced budget pledge and fuel efficiency standards - 328 words
Or, in USA Today style, here are Tim Russert's real priorities:
Now, there are certainly serious ethical questions about Guiliani. But these pale in comparison to questions about how he would conduct himself in office, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. Unfortunately, however, Russert wants to break news and the way to do that is to force Giuliani to go on the record about skeletons in his closet.
Update 5:41 PM: I should explicitly clarify that Russert did ask Giuliani two questions about Podhoretz as part of the 1401 words of Iran discussion. However, as I argue above, Russert devoted far more of his program to ethics and honesty issues that are far less important for the country as a whole.
I understand what you are saying, but the ethics questions are truly important, not just because they are scandalous and good headlines, but also because they speak to his personal judgment and whom he chooses to surround himself with while he might be in office. They show he is a hypocrite : pretending to be Mr. Law and Order, going after white collar crimes, mobsters, squeegee men, but in his personal life and professional life he does business with corrupt people and countries for $, he is close friends and associates with Bernie Kerick who has absolute mob ties and Allan Placa, a defrocked priest who allegedly molested little boys and now helps other accused priests escapee prosecution, he engaged in multiple barely concealed, torrid affairs and broke up with his wife during a press conference, he employed Police officers to squire around his mistress on shopping expeditions, he fired the few good people who got things done in NYC and were responsible for all the improvements that he now takes credit for (Bill Bratton, Rudy Crew, another School's Chancellor I can't remember and his first Fire Chief) while putting his trust in corrupt, blundering meat heads like Kerick. And Russert didn't even ask him about the near race-riots that happened under his NYC tenure - he is an out-and-out racist and did real harm to this city with his dismissive, intolerant attitude to black people and also towards artists. Not to mention all of his bad decisions before, during and after 9/11. The guy is immoral and inept and does not know how to build consensus because he is a tyrant, a megalomaniac and, frankly, quite insane. He is unfit to be dog-catcher, forget about President of the United States. I would have gone after him harder.
Posted by: Zandy Hartig | December 10, 2007 at 05:41 AM