Slamming Tenet

"Thompson also has begun inoculating himself against potential attacks from rivals. During a question-and-answer session with House members on April 18, Thompson was asked about his colorful dating history from 1985 to 2002, while he was divorced.

" 'I was single for a long time, and, yep, I chased a lot of women,' Thompson replied, chuckling, according to an attendee who took notes. 'And a lot of women chased me. And those that chased me tended to catch me.' "

Well, it beats a candidate who kept chasing women and failing.

The New York Times also takes note of Thompson's behind-the-scenes maneuvering. I bet Tommy Thompson, who is running, wonders why he's losing the Thompson Primary.

Isn't it too early for the press to be bored with the existing candidates? The Wall Street Journal has another of those will-Michael-Bloomberg-run pieces:

" 'More people are willing to consider an independent today than in 1992,' says Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who worked for Mr. Perot, and then for Mr. Bloomberg in 2001. He predicts the mayor could get as much as 25% of the popular vote.

"Mr. Bloomberg, who is 65 years old, denies he is running, although the New York gossip columns regularly quote 'friends' claiming otherwise."

No one has ever accused Michael Wolff of subtlety, and this Vanity Fair piece on Rudy pulls no punches:

"There's no politician more fun to write about than Rudy Giuliani. He's your political show of shows--driven to ever greater public outlandishness by a do-anything compulsion always to be at the center of attention. At some point, when he was New York's mayor, it seemed to stop mattering to him that this attention was, for his political career, the bad kind of attention. Politics appeared no longer to be his interest; to prove, over and over again, that it's his right--his art, even--to be at the center of attention was. Even this does not really explain the implausibility, and entertainment, of Rudy as a politician.

"The explanation for what makes Rudy so compelling among people who know him best--including New York reporters who've covered him for a generation, and political pros who've worked for him--is simpler: he is nuts, actually mad.

"Now, this line should be delivered with the proper timing (smack your head in astonishment when you deliver it). And it implies some admiration and affection: he's an original. But it is, too, a considered political diagnosis: every student of Rudy Giuliani--indeed, every New Yorker--has witnessed, and in many cases suffered, his periods of mania, political behavior that, in the end, can't have much of a rational explanation."

Another Rudy problem: Putting out a list of supporters that includes some non-supporters.