As expected, Giuliani's best bud and his pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, Bernie Kerik, has been indicted.

A federal grand jury has voted to indict former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on charges stemming from the acceptance of free rent and apartment renovations, tax evasion and lying on his application for the job as head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Giuliani has been thrown on the defensive over Kerik and rightfully so. Giuliani is running on his self-proclaimed competence governing New York City and his association with Kerik calls into question something that is at the heart of his competence: his judgment.

Remember, Giuliani and Kerik aren't merely buddies or former colleagues, Giuliani actually appointed Kerik to Department of Corrections commissioner in 1998 and police commissioner in 2000 before recommending him to head DHS. If a subtext to his candidacy is that he will be Bush except competent, then the compromised ethics of one of Giuliani's appointees creates an immediate psychic link with Bush, who's had so many questionable appointees himself, Kerik, briefly, among them.

Another reason the Kerik situation is difficult for Giuliani is that he can't fully throw Kerik under the bus since a reduction in crime, something the police commissioner would presumably be involved in, is one of the things Giuliani touts as a rationale for his candidacy. Post-indictment, it's clear that Giuliani is playing it as a mistake that he regrets and promises...really...won't happen again.

"You have to judge that in the overall context in everything that I did, and how many right decisions did I make and how many wrong decisions did I make," he said. "And the balance is very much in favor of -- I must have been making the right decisions if the city of New York turned around. If crime went down by 60 percent, if homicide went down by 70 percent."

"I made mistakes when I was the mayor, and I make mistakes as a candidate, I will make mistakes as a president," Giuliani said.

"The question is do I make a lot more correct decisions than I make wrong ones?

You don't really want us to answer that, do you, Rudy?

The larger problem for Giuliani is that the high-profile nature of the Kerik case is giving the media an excuse to finally start investigating Giuliani's actual record (he'll be addressing the Kerik situation on both ABC News and Nightline tonight.) This media scrutiny should make it all the more difficult for Giuliani to keep up the "America's Mayor" charade since, as we've seen in polling throughout the year, the more people get to know Rudy, the less they seem to like him.

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Rudy Giuliani may be leading in the national polls for the GOP nomination and viewed by the folks inside the Beltway as the leading Republican in the race today, but lurking beneath is a real problem -- two words: Bernie Kerik (from Greg B. Smith of the New York Daily News, via TPM).

Bernard Kerik's legal nightmare is about to get worse, with federal prosecutors expected to file charges against the former police commissioner that will likely include allegations of bribery, tax fraud and obstruction of justice, the Daily News has learned.

The indictment, expected next month, could prove to be an embarrassing obstacle for Kerik's former mentor Rudy Giuliani, who is cruising at the top of the polls heading into the presidential primary gauntlet.

[...]

Last spring, Kerik turned down a deal to plead guilty to tax charges. Since then, the probe has expanded to include other charges, the sources said.

The indictment will have direct implications for Giuliani, the sources said.

For one, another Giuliani commissioner and a top inspector general during Giuliani's years as mayor will be called as witnesses to describe the secret meeting in Tribeca.

This news is just awful for Giuliani, and the only thing that doesn't make it a total disaster for the GOP as a whole is the fact that it's coming out now, not after Giuliani secured the nomination -- though they could still fall into a bit of a trap by choosing Giuliani. Here's how it would play out. Giuliani is nominated. Unless Kerik goes for a plea deal relatively soon, a trial could play out over the course of the next several months, perhaps even longer than a year. In this case, questions about Kerik's alleged mob ties, and Giuliani's repeated and continued support for Kerik during his mayoralty and afterward, dog Giuliani throughout the campaign, with every new revelation from the trial adding more fuel to the flames. Combine this with the potential that conservative Whte Evangelicals, or at least a portion of them, would stay home or even worse vote for a third party, and it grows increasingly difficult to see a Giuliani victory in a general election (a situation that according to the most recent polling, which puts Hillary Clinton up 51 percent to 43 percent over Giuliani, already doesn't extremely likely).

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For the better part of the last six years, Rudy Giuliani's status as "America's Mayor" based on his perceived performance on 9/11 has been sacrosanct in the media. Although there have been significant questions about Giuliani's policies and how he actually handled the lead up to and aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, they have not been given much, if any, airtime in the broadcast media or column inches in the print media. That is until now. In an article in Friday's issue of The New York Time, William K. Rashbaum takes a look at one aspect of the myth of Rudy Giuliani and effectively shreds it to pieces.

Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik's relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik's appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Mr. Giuliani's testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik's appointment as the city's top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik's entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation's homeland security secretary.

[...]

Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty last summer to improperly allowing the company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, or its subsidiaries, to do $165,000 worth of free renovations on his Bronx apartment in late 1999 and 2000. The company has denied paying for the work, and has disputed any association with organized crime. But the two brothers who run it have been indicted in the Bronx on charges they lied under oath about their dealings with Mr. Kerik.

The revelation that Rudy Giuliani appointed as New York City chief of police and recommended President Bush appoint as Homeland Security Secretary a man with alleged mob ties -- ties that he knew about -- directly undercuts one of Giuliani's greatest strengths as a candidate for the presidency. Simply put, no one with strong homeland security credentials would even consider backing someone with alleged connections with organized crime.

But for as interesting as this story is -- and indeed it does paint an interesting picture -- the more important aspect of the story is that it seems to signal that the media are finally willing to take a critical look at Rudy Giuliani's record as mayor, which hasn't occurred in a great number of years. While the glowing treatment that Giuliani has received since the 9/11 attacks might not be over, just an evenhanded look at the serious questions about his handling of issues related to domestic security, to mention just one area, could spell real trouble Giuliani's candidacy for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, who is already beginning to face heat for his previous positions and actions that ran contrary to the views of the right wing of the Republican Party (these two videos, in particular, are problematic for Giuliani). And though this story, in and of itself, will not come even close to sinking Giuliani's candidacy, if it does indeed foreshadow the type of coverage that he will receive in the coming weeks and months, it's not out of the question that his presidential bid will go the way of his 2000 senatorial campaign -- a lot of initial hubbub but a quick ending long before voters actually go to the polls.

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