The recent negative articles about Rudy Giuliani don't tell me much about Rudy himself, but they do tell me he's not going to be a media darling in the '08 campaign -- and he may not have seen that coming.

First the purloined strategy notebook becomes a multi-day story -- see today's coverage in The New York Times. Now Newsweek runs "What the Rudy Memo Missed: The Giuliani Leak May Be the Least of His Problems." It's really an absurd article -- its list of alleged Giuliani vulnerabilities includes his poor image among blacks (because, of course, Republicans always depend so much on the African-American vote to get elected) and his high earnings since leaving the mayor's office (because, of course, America would never elect a rich Republican as president). Even the suggestion that Rudy's vulnerable because he's too much of a Bush cheerleader is silly -- John McCain literally embraced Bush during the '04 campaign, and who could be closer to Bush than the most popular non-candidate, Condi Rice? The Bush administration is becoming more and more despised, but -- alas -- those associated with it still aren't irreversibly tainted.

Saint McCain isn't getting this kind of mainstream press coverage; I'm not sure even the loss of a strategy book by his campaign would have been treated as a blunder (he might have been portrayed as the victim of a dirty trick).

Rudy intimidated the press in New York while he was mayor, and many journalists, including quite a few self-styled liberals, fell for the line that he invented crime reduction (which, of course, happened nationwide in the Clinton years). There was some negative coverage, but much less than he had a right to expect. And then 9/11 happened. I think Rudy expected the national media to be his lapdog -- I did too -- and it's not happening. It remains to be seen whether he'll adjust.