KERIK INDICTED: ONE MORE BULLET GIULIANI WILL DODGE

You know the story already, I'm sure:

A federal grand jury has voted to indict former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on charges stemming from the acceptance of free rent and apartment renovations, tax evasion and lying on his application for the job as head of the Department of Homeland Security, two federal sources and a source involved in the defense told ABC News.

DownWithTyranny asks:

WILL BERNIE KERIK'S INDICTMENT BE THE DEATH KNELL FOR GIULIANI'S CAMPAIGN?

No.

People in the New York area know who Kerik is. Political mavens know who Kerik is. To everyone else, he's nobody. The rest of the country has no visceral sense of the link between the two of them, and seeing a few four-second film clips of them together isn't going to change that.

Anyone who's fallen for Giuliani has fallen for the myth of Giuliani: that he's some sort of ubermensch, a giant who tamed savage urban beasts, then faced down Death Itself. These starry-eyed hero-worshipping voters -- and there may be enough of them, a year from now, to put Giuliani in the freaking White House -- can't imagine him existing on the same stratum as a hapless mook like Kerik. Never mind the fact that the two of them actually did exist on the same stratum.

We'd have to turn Giuliani from a myth back into a man before voters could absorb the notion that Kerik's failing has something to do with him; alas, that's not happening. Giuliani's Teflon will remain intact, at least through this.