And I thought that it was such a perfect relationship. With the president wetting his pants and sucking his thumb in an underground bunker somewhere in Nebraska on 9/11, Guiliani was the voice of America. Now that the election is over, Bush rode that horse as far as it could take him and now there are signs of trouble in that once perfect partnership. The blood curdling screams of "fear" and "9/11" were oh-so helpful on the campaign trail but now it's time to push aside the "moderates" and non-wingnuts. All of the talk about Guiliani working in the administration seems to be rumor mongering by outsiders.
This should be a case study for those "moderate" Republicans who think they can remain part of the extremists running the GOP. Unless you have a Christian religious conversion of re-birth, you are a heathen and not to be trusted. Re-borns though can apparently blow coke, booze it up, organize secret abortions and skip military service and all is forgiven.
"If the war on terror is your campaign's number one issue, there's no better symbol of that than Rudy Giuliani," said a government official who knows Mr. Bush and Mr. Giuliani and who asked not to be identified because he did not want to be seen as denigrating the mayor's relationship with the president. "But you shouldn't confuse that with closeness."
Republicans say that Mr. Bush felt little affection for Mr. Giuliani, and that he was particularly perplexed as the mayor allowed his personal life to unravel publicly in the spring of 2000.
"There aren't a lot of people close to the president who have those kind of experiences," said the Republican close to the administration, referring to Mr. Giuliani's admissions of infidelity with the woman who became his third wife and
to his bitter split from his second wife, Donna Hanover.
"It's an issue of not understanding it. I've had discussions with him where he's asked, 'What's this guy all about?' "
