On Mr. Giuliani's priorities
The Man Who Knows Too Little: What Rudy Giuliani's greedy decision to quit the Iraq Study Group reveals about his candidacy
By Fred Kaplan, Slate
Posted Thursday, June 21, 2007, at 6:44 PM ET
If you don't read Newsday, you might not know (I didn't until this week) that Rudy Giuliani was an original member of the Iraq Study Group — the blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton — but he was forced out after failing to show up for any of the panel's meetings.
The day after the Newsday story appeared, Giuliani explained that he'd started thinking about running for president, and his presence on the panel might give it a political spin. "It didn't seem that I'd really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution," he said.
The more likely reason for Giuliani's no-shows is much plainer — money. Craig Gordon, the Newsday reporter who wrote the story in the Long Island paper's June 19 edition, discovered that on the three days of meetings that Giuliani missed (before quitting), he was out of town, delivering highly lucrative speeches.
On April 12, 2006, he was giving a keynote address at an economics conference in South Korea for a fee of $200,000. On May 18, he was giving a speech on leadership in Atlanta for $100,000.
At that point, Baker gave Giuliani an ultimatum: Start showing up for sessions, or quit.
(The rest is here.)
By Fred Kaplan, Slate
Posted Thursday, June 21, 2007, at 6:44 PM ET
If you don't read Newsday, you might not know (I didn't until this week) that Rudy Giuliani was an original member of the Iraq Study Group — the blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton — but he was forced out after failing to show up for any of the panel's meetings.
The day after the Newsday story appeared, Giuliani explained that he'd started thinking about running for president, and his presence on the panel might give it a political spin. "It didn't seem that I'd really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution," he said.
The more likely reason for Giuliani's no-shows is much plainer — money. Craig Gordon, the Newsday reporter who wrote the story in the Long Island paper's June 19 edition, discovered that on the three days of meetings that Giuliani missed (before quitting), he was out of town, delivering highly lucrative speeches.
On April 12, 2006, he was giving a keynote address at an economics conference in South Korea for a fee of $200,000. On May 18, he was giving a speech on leadership in Atlanta for $100,000.
At that point, Baker gave Giuliani an ultimatum: Start showing up for sessions, or quit.
(The rest is here.)
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