With an endorsement like that, who needs opponents?
Egocentric former Mayor Rudy Giuliani went on TV yesterday as a surrogate for presidential contender Mitt Romney — but seemed to pump himself up more than the presumed GOP nominee.
Fellow Republican Giuliani, who ran for president in 2008, called Romney the best presidential candidate yesterday, but when shown a 2008 clip of him criticizing Romney, he went on to say why he was better.
“I was comparing what I thought was my far superior record to his otherwise-decent record, but the numbers weren’t as great,” Giuliani, who endorsed Romney in April, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Giuliani went on to point out how the Big Apple created 500,000 jobs while he was mayor to Romney’s 40,000 as governor of Massachusetts and how York’s unemployment rate dropped 50 percent to Romney’s 15 percent.
“I had massive reduction in unemployment,” Giuliani said.
The ex-mayor said that Romney had “almost a perfect record for someone running right now” before he jabbed him for his often wooden mannerisms.
He called Romney a “somewhat formal person,” while defending his ability to connect with voters.
“There’s some kind of a personal connection that doesn’t get made that the other candidates probably do a better job at,” said the man dubbed “America’s Mayor” following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “My advice to him would be: Be yourself,” Giuliani said. “If, in fact, you are a somewhat formal person, that’s OK. Be a formal person.”
Giuliani even went on to take credit for helping Romney turn around the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City following a bribery scandal and the 9/11 nightmare.
“I worked with him when he took the Olympics out of chaos,” Giuliani said.
Newt Gingrich, who was among the first to go after Romney hard on his record heading Bain Capital, seemed to give his former nemesis a more full-throated assist on Sunday.
“Bain as an issue doesn’t work because people look at it in balance,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
Team Obama jumped on the Bain issue, and has recently unleashed TV ads that demonize Romney’s corporate-raider career and argued Romney’s business experience doesn’t qualify him to become the nation’s CEO.
Meanwhile, as both Romney and President Obama plan to observe Memorial Day today and court military voters with public appearances, it marks the first time since World War II that neither likely presidential contender has served in the military.
Romney, 65, was deferred because he served as a Mormon missionary in France. He was eligible for the Vietnam draft upon his return to the US, but his number was never called. Obama, 50, was too young to be drafted.
