The Bunker

By Kevin Drum

(Political Animal)  THE BUNKER....When Rudy Giuliani finally agreed to build an emergency-command center in New York City back in 1996, the city's emergency management director recommended a site in Brooklyn: it was a safe location, had a low profile, and could be built quickly. Giuliani refused. He wanted a location he could walk to, so the command bunker ended up in the World Trade Center instead, where it was destroyed on 9/11.

But there's more. Mark Kleiman points out this paragraph from Wayne Barrett's takedown of Giuliani in the Village Voice:

Giuliani's office [in the bunker] had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator.

So far the Christian right has at least semi-forgiven Giuliani for his stands on abortion and gay rights. And the philandering and the messy divorce don't seem to have hurt him all that much either. But I wonder what they'll think of this? And I wonder which mud-slinging Republican opponent will finally get desperate enough to craft a Willie Horton style attack ad darkly allowing the obvious innuendo here to flit across conservative television screens?