Razzle Dazzle
What Rudy Couldn't Afford

By RICHARD STEIER

To figure out Rudy Giuliani's reaction when the Daily News published excerpts of his purloined campaign briefing book last week, it's logical to fall back on his favorite movie, "The Godfather," and the lines uttered by John Marley as the movie producer Jack Woltz in explaining why he won't give a major role to Johnny Fontane.

Mr. Fontane had seduced a starlet Mr. Woltz had been sleeping with, Mr. Marley said, leading her to throw away her career just "to make me look ridiculous. And a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous."

The ridicule visited upon our former Mayor after the News accounts of the stolen documents was perhaps more damaging to his presidential hopes than the actual contents that were revealed.

That was perhaps best seen by an editorial about the matter in the newspaper, which had treated Mr. Giuliani with great deference even before he cut $17 million off the $34-million penalty publisher Mort Zuckerman was supposed to pay for backing out of a deal to buy the site of the New York Coliseum.

Hitting Him in the Breadbasket

PREMATURE SELF-IMMOLATION: The loss of Rudy Giuliani's detailed campaign briefing book by a staffer and the ex-Mayor's handling of the fallout have dimmed his chances of being elected President even before he declares himself a candidate. One political consultant, likening the mess to Jeanine Pirro's botched announcement of her run for U.S. Senate last year, said, 'He's stumbling before he even gets to the podium.'

The Jan. 3 News editorial was headlined, "Rudy's Private Parts," and concluded with a reference to the $100 million that the briefing book had set as a Giuliani fundraising target for 2007, saying, "Memo to Candidate Rudy: Spend some of the dough to hire a security consultant to go over the basics with your campaign staff. Someone like, say, Giuliani Partners."

The paper's front-page headline, "They Stole My Plans," summoned memories of the Post's beauty when then-State Attorney General Dennis Vacco complained that votes by non-citizens accounted for his 1998 loss to Eliot Spitzer: "Aliens Stole My Election."

Political consultant George Arzt said the incident was particularly damaging to Mr. Giuliani because he has built a very profitable company, and become a highly paid corporate speaker, based on the perception - in the wake of his cool performance following the World Trade Center attacks - that he was an expert on security.

"When people start laughing at you and your strength, then you've got a real problem," said Mr. Arzt, a former Press Secretary to Ed Koch who was a 1993 campaign adviser to Mr. Giuliani during his first winning race for Mayor. He was alluding to the reaction of John Weaver, a key adviser to Sen. John McCain: "I thought [Giuliani Partners] was a security company."

Mr. Giuliani's spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, released a statement saying that an unidentified aide had lost a piece of luggage that had been placed on a private plane, and that it was not returned until several days later. She said that "it is clear that the document was removed from the luggage and photocopied." A copy of the material in the briefing book was subsequently obtained by Daily News political reporter Ben Smith, who identified his source as someone "sympathetic to one of Giuliani's rivals for the White House."

The Post quoted unidentified Rudy aides as saying that the swiping of the book occurred while Mr. Giuliani was traveling with Charles Crist, a fellow Republican who was elected to succeed Jeb Bush as Governor of Florida. Sen. John McCain also campaigned for Mr. Crist.

McCain Goes With the Joke

This merely succeeded in prolonging the story and making Mr. Giuliani a bigger target for derision. On Jan. 4, two days after the first piece ran in the News, Don Imus interviewed Senator McCain and jokingly accused him of being behind the theft.

Mr. McCain retorted, "You know, we always try to engage in significant covert activity."

One of the problems the incident created for Mr. Giuliani was the questions it raised about the competence of his campaign. One journalist who's considered sympathetic to the former Mayor had remarked a month ago, "He's gotta get some better people working for him."

Much of the material in the briefing book appeared to have been prepared by Anne Dickerson, Mr. Giuliani's chief fund-raiser, who previously toiled in that role for President Bush. It was not clear, however, that it was Ms. Dickerson who had been lugging the book around at the time that it disappeared.

There were numerous skeptics about the explanation given by Ms. Mindel as to how the book was obtained by forces hostile to Mr. Giuliani. "How do you put a book like that in your luggage?" Mr. Arzt said. "You never let something like that out of sight. Why would anyone go to Giuliani Partners for security if this is how they handle something like this?"

Others surmised that some campaign aide left it behind in a more public place, like a hotel bar, and that the Giuliani camp's story was cooked up to make Rudy seem like a victim rather than a man giving responsibility to the wrong people.

"It doesn't make any difference," said Maureen Connelly, a political consultant who worked on campaigns for both Mr. Koch (in 1977 and 1981) and Mr. Giuliani (in 1989). "That document should not be taken on the road. You don't bring Pandora's Box with you." Any notes the briefing book contained on politicians or potential campaign contributors could have been copied, with the book being left back home, she said.

Laid Out His Weaknesses

Among the contents of the book was a listing of the areas where Mr. Giuliani might be vulnerable in a presidential campaign, ranging from his past association with Bernie Kerik to his second and third wives, and the ugly divorce case in which both were entangled.

But those are all obvious issues, and while they might not previously have entered the consciousness of the national electorate, his potential opponents certainly knew all the salient details.

Interestingly, the briefing book made no mention of his first marriage, which Mr. Giuliani got annulled by claiming that he thought his wife was a more distant cousin than turned out to be the case. The end of that union was not nearly as messy as his break-up with Donna Hanover, which he announced at a press conference before informing her of his plans to seek a divorce, but the capsule version - he married his second cousin - could be just as damaging for a man who has polled surprisingly well among evangelical Christians.

The irony of that part of the briefing book, Mr. Arzt said, is that to this point, "Nobody's put out a campaign document against Rudy Giuliani. He's put out a campaign document against himself; in black and white, all his vulnerabilities."

It might also seem like the details in the briefing book about his fund-raising target for this year and the contributors he hoped to tap are not earth-shaking news.

"But what if you don't raise $100 million?" Ms. Connelly asked, noting that he had set up his campaign to be judged a disappointment if it fell short of that target for this year.

'Can't Ask Them Now'

"It hurts," Mr. Arzt said, "because on the fund-raising side you can't go to those people for money." Several of the big contributors who were identified have since made donations to Senator McCain, but Mr. Arzt noted that big givers often hedge their bets by providing smaller sums to their second choices. "You don't think McCain is putting the screws to those people now telling them they better not give Rudy anything?"

Nothing about last week's disclosures does irreparable damage to Mr. Giuliani's chances, but the fallout is an early setback at a time when the polls marked him as a formidable foe for Mr. McCain, who while the presumed front-runner is a few points behind among voters in Iowa, the scene of the first election battle next year.

Cites Pirro's Early Slip

"Sometimes it's the little things that hurt you more than the big things," Ms. Connelly said, noting that Jeanine Pirro's aborted campaign for U.S. Senate last year was doomed from the time during her announcement speech that she paused for more than 30 seconds, then blurted, "Where's page 10?"

"He's stumbling before he even gets to the podium," she said of Mr. Giuliani.

And while the ex-Mayor is a good if not captivating speaker, he has never been a great campaigner.

His 1989 run for Mayor was beset by early stumbles before he rallied to narrowly lose to David Dinkins.

In 1993, running against an incumbent who had been badly wounded by his tepid response to the 1991 Crown Heights riots - and a state report issued that June that highlighted his administration's failures during that conflagration - Mr. Giuliani won their rematch, but not before several times stepping on the message of his own press conferences by wading into other controversies while taking questions from reporters. His re-election in 1997 came without an anxious moment, aided by a solid record during his first term, support from unions that figured he might be gentler if they backed him, and a lackluster campaign by Democratic opponent Ruth Messinger.

Mugging the Piano Man

But his brief run for Senate against Hillary Clinton showcased the annoyingly nerdy side of Mr. Giuliani and the youthful loyalists he placed in key campaign positions: on one occasion, he tried to skewer the then-First Lady by harping on a Billy Joel song with references to drug use that was played over the sound system prior to one of her rallies.

Mr. Giuliani can point to more concrete accomplishments during eight years as Mayor than Ms. Clinton can cite during her first term as a member of the Senate minority, but he also has made far more errors in judgment, in areas from race relations to his continued elevation of Mr. Kerik, who even Rudy has come to acknowledge has severe ethical shortcomings. The man who wrote a book entitled "Leadership" is not supposed to tap someone who later became both a convicted criminal and a national punchline as his Police Commissioner and then promote him for the position of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.

That was one of the issues the purloined briefing book referred to when it suggested he might face insurmountable problems in getting elected once the other side of America's Mayor came to national attention.

Protecting His Image

Maybe that's why Ms. Mindel was hollering about "dirty tricks" and giving the story an extra day or two to play out rather than simply saying someone in the campaign had goofed and moving on.

During the 2004 Republican convention, delegates from states like Georgia and Texas said they would seriously consider Mr. Giuliani for their party's nomination even knowing his stand was more liberal than theirs on issues like abortion, gay rights and gun control, because they were so impressed with the leadership he had showed on 9/11 and in the weeks that followed.

But Mr. Giuliani hadn't run into buildings to rescue anybody. What he had done was to present an image of someone who was shaken yet remained calm and determined; who could assess the damage done and give the orders and make the requests that would begin restoring normalcy to the city. The revelations about his tangled personal life, the seamier details regarding Mr. Kerik, and miscues like losing control of the briefing book chip away at that picture of someone in control and in command.

"Security is supposedly his specialty," Ms. Connelly said. "Now he looks foolish. And it's better to be criticized than laughed at."