Even if you've got a law degree from New York University and a few million dollars in the bank you can make big mistakes of strategy.

Rudy Giuliani was going to use the "rope-a-dope" strategy in his campaign for president. His competitors could wear out their funding and welcome with the public early, then he would swoop in at the last moment in Florida and cakewalk in, since he was the obvious pick years ago for the admirable way he led New York on 9/11.

Unfortunately for him rope-a-dope didn't work, and "first one in it wins it" proved to be the truism that was true. Iowa and New Hampshire are small states where radio and TV advertising is very affordable and much of their small population can be met on the ground by bus. Plus CNN, the major networks and all the national newspapers follow those contests very closely, so the candidates who competed there got untold fortunes in national free air time. By the time Giuliani put the pedal down in Florida only the states with much larger populations were left. These voters can't all be met by bus, and the TV and radio advertising prices are astronomical compared to Iowa and New Hampshire. By this point the public was close to making their minds up, anyhow, and Giuliani hadn't been top-of-mind in awhile. Last night he finally threw in the towel and his supporters to John McCain.

The thing that really wrecked him, I think, was his appearance in front of the NRA where he famously took a phone call from his wife in the middle of a speech. Their affair while Giuliani was mayor was already widely-publicized and a sticky issue, and that move just sealed it up. Did America want a henpecked husband who had to put the largest and most powerful political lobby in America on hold because his wife wanted him to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home? That one phone call guaranteed the $30 million he would spend in Florida would be wasted.

Now I've got to wonder what his future looks like. Previously he was the inspirational leader of New York, the world's richest city, on 9/11, the darkest day in recent memory. He had a book called Leadership under his belt and was highly-paid for speaking engagements. Now he's one of a few also-rans for president who may put the audience on hold if his wife wants to check up on him. Is this going to drive the price of his speaking engagements down?

Oh, well, he doesn't work in a call center penitentiary like so many of us, so I'm sure he'll be fine.

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