When Judi calls, Rudy must pick up, or else

As we know, quite a few people thought it was a setup when Rudolph Giuliani answered the phone call from his wife during his speech to the NRA. Writing in the October 5th New York Newsday , Dan Janison gets at the astonishing inside truth of the matter:

A backer and former aide of Giuliani was asked if this was indeed just political stagecraft.

“No,” the source chuckled convincingly. “The truth is worse than that.

“When she calls he must answer, or else it will be, ‘I called you, why didn’t you pick up?’” insisted the supporter, who spoke only if unidentified. “He must pick up that phone no matter what. That’s her line to call on. If you recall, when the phone rang, he knew it was her. She calls all the time.”

“For Rudy, this buys peace,” the source added. If he didn’t answer, “there would be hell to pay. I think she’ll call him during his first State of the Union.”

In fact, Giuliani himself has joked in public about a scene in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” in which the George C. Scott character, Gen. Buck Turgidson, interrupts a meeting with the U.S. president about nuclear warfare for a cutesy-poo chat with his woman.

When asked Thursday by a radio interviewer about his cell-phone interludes, the GOP front-runner said: “I do it for fun. Most people seem to like it and enjoy it. The issue of gosh, would I do it in the middle of a National Security Council meeting? Of course not.”

We’ll take that as a campaign promise. But it appears that old hands in the Giuliani camp aren’t exactly giving Rudy’s cell phone moments a ringing endorsement. One occurred in June before a Latino audience.

Campaign personnel have privately chafed for months at Judith Giuliani’s forays into the public eye. They winced through a smoochy impromptu magazine photo, a rambling speech she gave at a fundraiser and the Barbara Walters joint interview.

“The problem is not in her calling him. It’s in him being unable to detach himself,” said a second former Giuliani aide who declined to be identified. “He didn’t carry a cell phone when he was mayor. In those days, though, she would check with him to see if the staff gave him her message.”

“No, this is real, no doubt about it,” added a third unidentified insider. “Will she refrain now that it’s become such an issue? Who knows?”…

- end of initial entry -

Gintas J. writes:

Giuliani’s wife knows what can happen with Rudy. He’ll dump his wife for another woman. Now that she’s his wife and not the other woman, she must be worried: who is the next other woman? Calls, calls, calls, all the time. Who are you with? What are you doing? When are you getting home? What’s that long hair on your shirt, whose is it?

You sow to the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

LA replies:

It’s even worse than that for her, because that Vanity Fair article a couple of months back said outright that Rudy’s gotten tired of her and his eye is wandering and she’s in a panic.

LA continues:

But I wonder about this story. Janison describes his source as a “backer” of Giuliani’s. But what kind of backer would tell such a damaging story about his candidate to a reporter? More like a stab-in-the-backer. Or maybe simply a former backer. Not that I’m not glad that he’s told us this.

N. writes:

You write:

“But I wonder about this story. Janison describes his source as a “backer” of Giuliani’s. But what kind of backer would tell such a damaging story about his candidate to a reporter? More like a stab-in-the-backer. Or maybe simply a former backer. Not that I’m not glad that he’s told us this.”

Possibly a supporter who is tired of Judi’s antics and fears that they could cost Giuliani the election is the source. If you think about it, at least some of those backing Giuliani must by now realize what a liability his third wife is, and at the very least wish he’d either stop carrying his cell phone, or convince her to stop calling.

In the larger picture, this really points to the huge vacancy in Rudy Giuliani’s moral sense and common sense. It ought to be enough to disqualify him for higher office. But, of course, in the modern world, nothing disqualifies anyone for any office.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 09, 2007 02:15 PM | Send