YO, MIKEY! I WANNA BE DA PRESIDENT!

Mike Allen of the Politico, writing about yesterday's GOP debate:

We got the best sense yet of what the varsity -- Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani -- will be like in the months and perhaps years ahead. Romney, always eager, is more clinical: Can you imagine Rudy saying "vis-a-vis"?

Er, Mike, here's Giuliani from the debate answering a question about the need to get congressional approval for an attack on Iran:

Mr. Giuliani: It really depends on exigency of the circumstances and how legitimate it is, that it really is an exigent circumstance. It's desirable, it's safer to go to Congress, get approval from Congress.

If you're really dealing with an exigent circumstance, then the president has to act in the best interests of the country.

Giuliani said "exigency" or "exigent" three times in three sentences. So why is it unimaginable that he'd use "vis-a-vis," which is less frou-frou than "exigent"?

Allen presumably heard Giuliani use these words, but when that led to a conflict between reality on the one hand and, on the other, the appealing legend in Allen's own mind of Rudy Da Big-City Street Fightuh, Allen printed the legend.

(By the way, if I wanted to waste a half hour, I'm sure I could find evidence of Giuliani saying "vis-a-vis.")