Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 10:59 am
Rudy: I'm Not Perfect
Having husbanded his cash as deep into the season as possible, Rudy Giuliani is hitting the airwaves in New Hampshire today with the first television ad of his campaign. Called "Tested", there are two rather remarkable things about the 60-second spot. First (and you might want to sit down for this), there are no images of 9/11 in the ad, only the most oblique reference by Giuliani to having been "tested" by crises. But he says this in the context of having become mayor when New York was in a sorry economic state; there's no mention of terrorism. Second, and this is more subtle in its presence than 9/11 is in its near total absence, there is a line in the script in which Giuliani obliquely acknowledges that he hasn't lived an Ozzie & Harriet personal life:
So, I believe I've been tested in a way in which the American people can look to me. They're not going to find perfection, but they're going to find somebody who has dealt with crisis almost on a regular basis and has had results. And in many cases exceptional results. Results people thought weren't possible.
The "not going to find perfection" line is an attempt, I assume, to pre-empt stories about his personal life -- specifically his three marriages -- by obliquely acknowledging that he hasn't always been a saint as a husband. It's a pretty vague attempt. We'll see if it works. Here's the ad:
About Swampland
Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost. His weekly TIME column, "In the Arena," covers national and international affairs. In 2004 he won the National Headliner Award for best magazine column. Read more
Senior Writer Karen Tumulty has been TIME's National Political Correspondent since 2001, and has also covered the White House and Congress for the magazine. A native of San Antonio, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, where her career choice has significantly lowered the average salary of her graduating class. But she gets lots of free magazines. Read more
Jay Newton-Small Jay Newton-Small covers politics for TIME. She has covered the Bush 43 White House and also Congress from the DeLay era to the present. And, yes, despite the misleading name SHE is a she. Read more
Michael Scherer is a correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked national assignments for Mother Jones magazine and Salon.com. Read more
Amy Sullivan is a senior editor at TIME magazine, and author of the book The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008). A Michigan native, she holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School. She writes about religion and politics for TIME, but no longer answers to the name "Bible Girl." Read more
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