Giuliani Time, Again

In an otherwise spotty article for Slate about Sarah Palin's defenders, Fred Kaplan brilliantly sized up Rudy Giuliani's latest reemergence:

On ABC TV Wednesday morning, he went so far as to claim that her "executive experience" would have enabled her to handle 9/11 with ease—far more so than Barack Obama or Joe Biden who, he said, have "the least executive experience of any presidential candidate in 100 years.

Well, not quite: John F. Kennedy had no executive experience before running for president. Neither, by the way, has John McCain. By this logic, Palin should top the ticket, with McCain as her No. 2. 

[snip]

I remember, as the Boston Globe's New York bureau chief, interviewing Giuliani in his office at City Hall while the 1996 Republican Convention was going on in San Diego. I asked him why he wasn't there. He said that he didn't go in for that kind of politics, that he had more in common with moderates in both parties than with extremists in either. That was then. I would have figured that, after tanking so disastrously in the GOP primaries—spending $59 million and winning a single delegate for his trouble—Rudy would have given up trying to placate the yahoos and gone back to raking in the big bucks. My guess is he's angling for a job in the McCain administration, either attorney general or director of homeland security. (Watch out!)

My god. He's right.

I can't even think about Giuliani as attorney general, and for homeland security director, I'd prefer Attila the Hun. In fact, this potential appointment concerns me more than the Supreme Court appointments. To read up on Giuliani and understand why he terrifies me, read this NY Times article, this Salon piece, and this surprising open letter about Giuliani from the NYC Firefighters Union. Those articles (mostly from - or about - the 1990's) shed light on his monstrous tenure as NYC mayor, but bear in mind that, per Kaplan's analysis, the guy seems to have unhinged all the way in the subsequent decade.