Rudy on Why Size Doesn't Matter; Rudy on Why Size Matters

In two separate speeches yesterday, Rudy Giuliani lauded the virtues of Sarah Palin’s small-town executive experience.

During an address to the New York delegation at the Marriott hotel in Minneapolis, he said “Sorry Senator [Obama], if the city is not big enough for you--they are probably that group of people who cling to religion and guns.”

And during his keynote address to introduce Sarah Palin at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul later that evening, he said “I’m sorry Barack Obama doesn’t feel her hometown is,” he paused, “cosmopolitan enough.”

But during his own run for president, the size of the city apparently mattered to Giuliani. In fact, the rationale for his executive experience was predicated on New York being a large cosmopolitan city.

Speaking in Florida in January 2008, he compared himself favorably to John McCain, saying, "I think it comes from the fact that he hasn't had the kind of experiences that I have—running America's largest city, being involved in America's 17th largest economy, running the second- or third-largest government."

At a Republican debate in Florida in November he said, “And the reason that I believe I'm qualified to be president of the United States is not because of September 11th, 2001; it's because I've been tested. I've been tested in a way in which I ran the third-largest government in this country, the 17th-largest economy in the world, and I got very, very remarkable results. And that is the evaluation of other people, not me.”

Speaking to the Federalist Society in November of 2007, Rudy spoke in favor of a flexible system that allows local autonomy.

“Federalism gives us flexibility to solve our own problems, it encourages experimentation and innovation. And I believe I understand this probably better than most because it’s rooted in my own executive experience. I ran a local government, now when I say local government most people in New York don’t think of themselves as having a local government. Because New York is so big, it’s the seventeenth-largest economy in the world, the third-largest government in terms of numbers of employees, one of the largest budgets in the country, but still it’s a local government.”

The population of Wasilla, where Palin served as mayor, went from 5,469 in 2000 to a projected 9,780 in 2007, according to the census bureau.