"That will live in my gallery of infamy," said social critic Camille Paglia, convinced the moment was fake. (Nor was there any question about what George W. Bush, then Texas governor, was referring to when he campaigned on a pledge to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House.)
Some believe there is a calculated quality to the touchy-feelyness of couples like the Giulianis. The former New York mayor and his wife need to present a solid, loving front to the world because they are each on their third marriage and he engaged in an affair with her while still married to his second wife, Donna Hanover.
"I think it's a very ostentatious, egregious and rather offensive appeal to women voters, and I think it's condescending and actually off the mark," said Paglia, a professor of humanities and media studies at Philadelphia's University of the Arts. "I feel the great majority of women voters don't like to see a woman with her hands and lips all over her man."
Giuliani spokesman Michael McKeon disputed whether anything was calculated about the Harper's Bazaar photograph. "That was more of a spontaneous thing than anything else," he said. "It was just a reflection of them and their relationship, and of the moment."
Thompson, who was single for 17 years after his divorce and who had a rich dating life between marriages, nevertheless does not have Giuliani's kind of relationship baggage.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who has been running third in national polls behind Giuliani and the undeclared Thompson, has been married for nearly four decades to his high school sweetheart, Ann, a fact the Romneys tout on the campaign trail.
Richard Land, a politically influential evangelical Christian, sees nothing improper about husbands and wives displaying affection for each other. ("I certainly liked Al kissing Tipper rather than an intern," he said.) But he was offended by the photo of Giulianis' embrace.
"If I were Rudy Giuliani and I were in my third marriage and my third wife was the woman I was committing adultery with when I was cheating on my second wife, I would probably avoid public displays of affection," said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy entity of the Southern Baptist Convention. "Most evangelicals have had their families touched by divorce, but what matters is the number and the circumstances."
