Opinion: Rudy Giuliani says he’s still a better choice than John McCain for president

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With friends like these, why do rivals bother with opposition researchers? Rudy Giuliani was on CNN Tuesday talking about John McCain and the presidential campaign, and said that he still thinks he was the best choice to be president. Giuliani was there to buff up McCain and his foreign policy credentials in the wake of the rock Wesley Clark tossed the other day.

When asked by interviewer John Roberts whether he thought he was better qualified than McCain to run the country, Giuliani said, ‘I thought I was best-qualified to be president.’ (The video is here, and this exchange comes around the 3:12 mark).

Now not many politicians would leave a race as Giuliani did and say later, ‘You know, the voters were right, I wasn’t the best choice.’ Political egos don’t cut that way. But the McCain camp had to wince, assuming they’re getting CNN down there in Colombia. The idea behind sending surrogates out is to have them make you look good, not make you look like a consolation prize.

Throughout the interview, Giuliani sounded as much like a candidate as a surrogate, talking up his own political resume in a session that had a peculiar deja vu feeling to it. But Giuliani assured Roberts, ‘I’m not a candidate. I’m not a choice.’ Not at the moment, no, but ...

-- Scott Martelle