Debates between presidential candidates about issues can be pretty vicious. But they’re mild compared to campaigns where one candidate decides to attack the other’s character. Rudy Giuliani is the leading Republican candidate for President because of the character he displayed when the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, so, inevitably, as he begins his presidential campaign, his character is about to go under the political microscope.

The Democrats are having a good time poking fun at Republicans, generally, on family values, saying that between them the three leading Democratic candidates for President have never had a divorce – while the three leading Republicans have been married eight times. The barbs got a little more pointed when they’re aimed at Giuliani.

When he was a young man Giuliani married his second cousin. Fourteen years later, when he annulled the marriage he claimed he hadn’t known they were cousins. When he ran for mayor, Democrats had a field day asking how that could be possible. When Giuliani announced his second divorce at a press conference – which apparently caught his wife by surprise – she retorted that he was having an affair with a staffer. After his divorce, the New York tabloids covered Giuliani’s courtship of his third wife, well, exactly the way you’d expect tabloids to cover Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt.

Giuliani’s strength as a candidate is based on the public character he displayed on 9-11. But presidential candidates can’t put their public character in one compartment and their private life in another. Everything is political fodder. Mayor Giuliani had better strap on his helmet.

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