Lunch with Giuliani: His Days as a Small-Town Mayor

Our friend Sam Rubenfeld, who is covering the Republican Convention for the Hofstra Chronicle, graciously alerted us to a video he took of today's Rudolph Giuliani's speech to a New York Republican Delegation lunch. You may view it here.

Basically it was a quieter rehearsal for tonight's more Duce-like performance. Giuliani started with a long encomium to John McCain, whom he called "one of the most experienced candidates for president for the last 100 years, from executive experience, military... not just another Senator, but a leader of the Senate." Lest attention flag, he devoted the second half of his address mostly to attacks on the opposition.

Giuliani linked Obama to the "Chicago machine." While John McCain, he said, does "what he believes is right for the country," Giuliani asked, "that is so different from his opponent, isn't it?" He asked if Democrats are "saying they would like Saddam Hussein back in charge in Iraq." Referring to Obama's alleged disrespect for Palin as "someone who has been a mayor," he apostrophized, "Sorry, Senator Obama, if the city's not big enough for you. I know that they're probably part of that group of people that clings to religion and guns, the group that doesn't count, small-town America [mutter], you don't study about them in Harvard, I guess." Giuliani also referred to Obama's habit as a state legislator of voting "present," saying that as President Obama couldn't "walk into the Oval Office, and Russia's attacking Georgia and you vote 'present.' Gee, guys, I'm here, now tell me what to do! You get the impression maybe that's the way it's going to work in an Obama Administration. I sure do from the things that he says."

In comparing his own experience as a mayor to Sarah Palin's -- "sometimes I felt like I was mayor of a small town" -- Giuliani claimed that citizens used to yell at him about uncollected garbage, which anyone who got a look at his customary security detail at that time would find suspicious. He said Joe Biden's experience was mostly in "being wrong" and "talking, talking, talking, talking." And he wondered how "liberal feminist groups" could ask if Sarah Palin had the time to be a mother and a VP. (A quick scan of the NOW website doesn't turn up anything about this; we'll get back to you if we find something.)

This is what such events are for, of course, and in keeping with the tone of the rest of the Convention thus far.