Giuliani national campaign compares 9/11 to World War II Rudy Giuliani, watching his status as GOP frontrunner evaporate, has launched a new ad in which the presidential candidate returns to the topic he knows best: the 9/11 terror attacks that fell three massive skyscrapers while he was mayor of New York.
As Giuliani steadies himself for expected defeats in next month's early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he's hardly campaigned, he is launching the new ad to remind voters of his most prominent legacy. In the ad, he compares the police and firefighters at Ground Zero to the "Greatest Generation" of World War II veterans, plenty of whom are now retired and living in Florida -- another key early-state primary Giuliani is resting much of his hopes on winning.
"During the day of September 11, living through the things that I saw and observed. Immediately, when I saw people helping each other. I saw the picture of the firefighters putting the flag up at ground zero," the Giuliani says in the TV commercial. "I said these are the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the greatest generation. They have the same resolve. The same understanding."
The ad starts Friday and is scheduled to run on nationally on cable's Fox News Channel. It also will air in New Hampshire, and, for the first time, Giuliani will expand his advertising to Florida. He has made that state a priority but his monthslong double-digit lead in that state's polls has narrowed as rival Mike Huckabee gained ground.
On Fox & Friends Thursday morning, conservative pundit Bill Kristol said he thought Giuliani made an "odd ad" because voters already know he was mayor when 9/11 happened.
"I think his failure so far, if he's failed, has been to articulate a governing agenda for the country," Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard said. "I would think he wants to go with a forward looking ad, what he would do as president, rather than a tribute to the Greatest Generation and to those who came after the Greatest Generation."
In the commercial, Giuliani recalls the World War II era and shows pictures of that period, as well as 2001 images of firefighters, other first responders, and an American flag amid World Trade Center wreckage. As classical music plays, Giuliani strikes an optimistic tone and recalls U.S. achievements like the space program to illustrate the country's will in overcoming challenges.
Putting terrorism front-and-center, he says: "When you come and try and take away from us our freedom, when you try and come here and kill our people, we're one and we're going to stand up to you and we're going to prevail."
As he has campaigned, Giuliani has sought to strike a careful balance to avoid the appearance that he's exploiting the attacks for his own political gain.
Even so, he has drawn criticism. Some firefighter unions and family members of those killed are campaigning against him, and Democratic candidate Joe Biden has poked him for his references to the attacks. Biden said the only words Giuliani's sentences amount to "a noun, and a verb and 9/11."
The Associated Press contributed to this report
This video is from Fox's Fox & Friends, broadcast on December 27, 2007.
| 
del.icio.us 
.gif)
