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Campaign coverage was split between Rudolph Giuliani, Barack Obama and John McCain. The spotlight on Republican candidate Giuliani concerned how he would spin the looming rap for graft of Bernard Kerik, his "longtime friend, protege and business partner," as NBC's John Yang put it. The expected indictment probes Kerik's tenure in charge of New York City's prisons when Giuliani was mayor. Giuliani was briefed about Kerik's alleged receipt of "gifts" from a mobbed-up business yet promoted him from prisons to the police department anyway…and "later pushed President Bush to name Kerik head of Homeland Security." Giuliani's defense to Yang was that he is not running as "perfect" but as someone who had "great success." To ABC's Jake Tapper (no link), Giuliani cited Kerik as an example of "the complexity of human life" while crediting him with "excellent results." Yang concluded that Kerik's character offers an insight into how the former mayor "might staff a Giuliani White House."
CBS assigned Dean Reynolds to follow Democrat Obama on the campaign trail in Iowa to check whether the more forceful challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton he had promised has materialized. NBC's David Gregory reported on the plan last week--and Reynolds now covers the execution with an answer in the affirmative. "The rollout is over. The rumble is on." Reynolds finds "a tougher, more competitive tone in debates and on the stump" and a candidate "trying to draw ever sharper distinctions" on Iraq, on Iran, on immigration and on "who could better unite the country." Obama claims Rodham Clinton's play-it-safe campaign is just following inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom: "Make yourself a small target by avoiding being definitive about anything."
On ABC, anchor Charles Gibson (no link) sat down with Republican candidate John McCain for the latest in his Who Is? series on the personal backgrounds of the candidates. Previous profiles have been on Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson (all subscription required). With McCain, Gibson concentrated on military matters. A self-confessed "rebellious" youth, reacting to a family tradition of high-ranking admirals, he graduated from the US Naval Academy "by the skin of his teeth…fifth from the bottom of his class." "Was it girls? Was it driving? Was it drinking?" Gibson wondered. "All of the above--well not so much the drinking," He was turned off booze because his father was an alcoholic. The event in his life that changed him from "respect and honor" for the United States to "really fall in love with my country" was his abusive five-year stint, including torture, in a Hanoi prisoner of war camp, "a time in my life that I will always cherish in many ways. I observed a thousand acts of courage and compassion and love--and those that I know best and love most are those that I was there with."
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