Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s
By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times
The past seven years have given us some helpful hints on what we want to avoid in the next president. I’m starting to make a list.
Quality to avoid No. 1: Loyalty.
Whenever you read that a candidate “values loyalty above all else” — run for the hills. Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you’re choosing a pet, but not a cabinet member.
How about if this time we try for a president who would recruit gifted people who can accomplish great things, as opposed to a room full of dopes who will never write tell-all memoirs?
Loyalty is on our mind today because of the indictment of Bernard Kerik, the really, really loyal former New York City police commissioner. Rudy Giuliani, who was entirely responsible for Kerik’s meteoric rise from mayoral chauffeur, has not seemed to draw any great lessons from his protégé’s spectacular fall. Giuliani did say that he made a “mistake in not clearing him effectively enough,” which sounds as if he is kicking himself for not sending a second squad of detectives out to interview Kerik’s neighbors. In fact, the lapse in the “clearing” procedure involved Giuliani ignoring the city investigations commissioner when he arrived with the news that Kerik was involved with a company suspected of having ties to organized crime.
Giuliani claims not to remember this moment in the vetting process, which seems sort of strange for a guy who made his career prosecuting the mafia and those-who-had-ties. The former mayor does, however, have a bad memory. We know this because he obtained an annulment of his 14-year-long first marriage on the grounds that he had forgotten that his wife was his second cousin.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
The past seven years have given us some helpful hints on what we want to avoid in the next president. I’m starting to make a list.
Quality to avoid No. 1: Loyalty.
Whenever you read that a candidate “values loyalty above all else” — run for the hills. Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you’re choosing a pet, but not a cabinet member.
How about if this time we try for a president who would recruit gifted people who can accomplish great things, as opposed to a room full of dopes who will never write tell-all memoirs?
Loyalty is on our mind today because of the indictment of Bernard Kerik, the really, really loyal former New York City police commissioner. Rudy Giuliani, who was entirely responsible for Kerik’s meteoric rise from mayoral chauffeur, has not seemed to draw any great lessons from his protégé’s spectacular fall. Giuliani did say that he made a “mistake in not clearing him effectively enough,” which sounds as if he is kicking himself for not sending a second squad of detectives out to interview Kerik’s neighbors. In fact, the lapse in the “clearing” procedure involved Giuliani ignoring the city investigations commissioner when he arrived with the news that Kerik was involved with a company suspected of having ties to organized crime.
Giuliani claims not to remember this moment in the vetting process, which seems sort of strange for a guy who made his career prosecuting the mafia and those-who-had-ties. The former mayor does, however, have a bad memory. We know this because he obtained an annulment of his 14-year-long first marriage on the grounds that he had forgotten that his wife was his second cousin.
(Continued here.)
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