The Note: Rudy Gets Roughed Up

May 15, 2007— -- Topping the polls is fun, Rudy, isn't it? You get invited to the best parties, your face graces the cover of magazines, and your mug is on TV even when you're not in your primo seat at Yankee Stadium. Then there's the matter of that big target you grow on your back . . .

Rudolph Giuliani's (R-N.Y.) harsh lesson in leading the pack is continuing going into tomorrow's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. It's not just abortion, where a fresh round of questions yesterday yielded new potential problems for his campaign. (Will Republicans believe the opinionated ex-mayor doesn't have an opinion as to when life begins?)

It's not just his consulting business, which earned $100 million in five years but also brought the former Gotham mayor into contact with a gallery of comic-book villains, according to The Washington Post. (How long can he keep his client list secret?) It's not just his personal life, with his three marriages, including his current one to Judith Nathan, who gets the New York magazine scrub the campaign had to know was coming. (They met in a cigar bar -- very "Sex and the City.")

Now come new details of Giuliani's signature moment -- 9/11 -- and they aren't flattering. The New York Times' Anthony DePalma today examines Hizzoner's possible culpability in the respiratory problems suffered by Ground Zero workers. DePalma reports that, in sidelining federal agencies and barreling ahead with cleanup without regard to safety rules, "Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack." LINK

On the Democratic side, front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is largely staying out of the news. But Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) used the first Sunday-morning interview of his candidacy to cling to middle ground on ABC's "This Week," touting his ability to "build consensus around hard problems." That extends to Iraq, where he's resisting pressure from former sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) to rule out compromise, despite the fact that Obama urged Congress to vote against war funding as a Senate candidate in 2003. Instead, Obama is intensifying his push to get Republican senators to support a troop withdrawal with a new Web campaign. "We can do it in a way that doesn't play games with our troops on the ground," Obama said. LINK