Rudy Giuliani: Relationships Vs. Resume

Will Republican Candidate's Turbulent Personal Life Hinder His Run For The White House?

(CBS)  What a difference a campaign makes.

Rudy Giuliani, as the presidential candidate in 2007, is always confident — and often alone. He bristles over questions about his reported "strained relationship" with his two children from his second marriage.

"My daughter's 17 years old. Isn't it best to leave her to grow up in privacy?" he recently asked.

Rudy Giuliani, as New York mayoral candidate circa 1993, was often seen with those same two kids and then-wife No. 2 Donna Hanover in tow.

“When he ran for mayor, he paraded his family around,” says longtime Giuliani critic Wayne Barrett, who has written two books on New York's former mayor.

“Now that he's got a very troubled personal life, then he says 'we've got to build a barrier around this, you can't talk about my personal life,'” says Barrett.

But Christian conservatives — a key voting block in the Republican primary — are talking about it.

“He's in his third marriage. And while evangelicals are much more tolerant of divorce than they used to be... three wives is one too many for most evangelical voters,” says Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.

But in this post-9/11 world, the Giuliani campaign and his supporters argue that leadership trumps character.

"In electing a president, Americans care about profiles in courage, not profiles in People magazine,” says Randy Mastro of the Giuliani campaign. “He offers the American people today the leadership on the issues that they care about most — staying on offense against terrorism, keeping our national economy strong.”

The latest CBS News poll of Republican primary voters bares that out. When asked who would you want as the GOP nominee when considering political record only, Giuliani wins. Add in personal life and he still wins by a comfortable margin.

---

CBS Poll: Giuliani Maintains Strength

---

But could that change?

"When a social conservative, if one arises that demonstrates electoral viability against Hillary Clinton, you're going to see social conservatives and other Republican primary voters dropping off Giuliani like fleas off a dead dog,” says Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.

He's been called worse. But whether in playful pictures, painful moments or challenges of his own making, Rudolph William Louis Rudy Giuliani III believes it's his resume and not his relationships that will decide his candidacy.