Giuliani on Meet the Press

I spent a lot of time in this month's issue of Bosworth bewailing the state of American Democracy. Voter participation is at alarmingly low rates, mainstream media sources exhaust endless effort to keep consumers from making choices, and the the current leadership seems "will of the people" is a hip new sequel to "Good Willing Hunting." Cue Sunday's "Meet the Press," and

Russert this week interviewed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Most seemed to think Rudy showed his true colors Sunday, coming off flippant, anxious, and a bit demonic. He shirked and evaded countless questions about corruption allegations, bad judgment, and various combinations of the two.

I suppose Russert effectively backed Rudy into a corner, but I can't help but feel like the entire interview let Giuliani off easy of the biggest problems with his candidacy, namely his loose relationship with the realities of the world as it is. Russert spent the first half of the interview forcing Giuliani to defend a complex record in office that makes him look like a sleazy, small time good-'ol-boys D-bag. He left little time to ask about Rudy's positions on the issues and even less time to follow up on some truly crazy responses. I can't help but feeling like a good portion of the interview gave Rudy Giuliani the soft-core tongue kiss he was hoping for.

As much as I respect Russert, he occasionally puts the "press" in depressing. Take two examples from MTP. First, Russert asked Giuliani if he thought homosexuality is wrong. Giuliani replied:

"My, my, my—no, I don’t believe it’s sinful. My, my moral views on this come from the, you know, from the Catholic Church, and I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality as a, as a way that somebody leads their life is not—isn’t sinful. It’s the acts, it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the—not the orientation that they have."

So apparently the centrist position on gays rights, according to Giuliani, is that being gay is perfectly fine (since you're born that way) but acting on the impulse you're born with is a sin. (Giuliani also invoked the Catholic church's official stance on the issue to bolster his point of view... and added that he sins all the time, so he must not be a bigot.)

Next Russert asked Giuliani about a recent bill designed to raise Miles Per Gallon standards in vehicles to an insipidly moderate 35 MPG by 2020. His response?

"I would not do it that way ... I would do it with heavy expansion of hybrid vehicles, which move some of the sources over to electricity, then deal with clean coal, nuclear power, hybrid vehicles, expansion of hydroelectric power, more oil refineries, more domestic oil. All of those things are the things that we should be supporting."

I cut a few things here for space, but two details strike me as relevant. First, Giuliani apparently didn't interpret the question as being about the environment (say, global warming?) at all, but rather, energy independence. Or if he did interpret the question as an environmental one, he apparently thinks more refineries are part of the solution.

So Russert let two fairly substantial substantive points pass, without follow-up, in a row. The guy isn't perfect, and he can't be expected to do everything in one brief hour, but I can't help but identify this moment as a fairly accurate example of the problem with the mainstream (esp. TV) media. MTP is the best political news show on TV, isn't it? So what does that say about the rest of the programming? For the moment, the "gotcha" system of election rigging (let's call it what it actually is) is working against Giuliani, a guy I don't like very much. But let's face it: his actions in allegedly providing security to Judi Nathan when she was his girlfriend promote an image of sleaziness, but have little to do with the future of America.

As much as I like to see Giuliani under scrutiny, I would feel a lot better if the mainstream media would take a closer look the substance of his positions. And that goes for the rest of the Republican field, and the Democrats too.