There's word today that Rudy Giuliani is not going to run for governor of New York in 2010, but that he's probably going to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for the same Senate seat he started to run for in 2002. The New York Daily News says this is all part of a plan to position himself for a 2012 presidential challenge.

Pop quiz: Where do you go after you lose a presidential election? Disneyworld, Rudy, not Crazytown. Let's recap some of the major career highlights for Mr. Giuliani since leaving office in 2002:

• He's had an extremely public and acrimonious divorce from his second wife, which was finally settled for about $7 million and was apparently so bitter that he's been estranged from both of his children.
• He's kept some bad company, most notably Bernard Kerik. Kerik, who Giuliani went into business with and also encouraged President Bush to appoint as director of Homeland Security, is currently in jail and recently pled guilty to eight felonies. He faces at least 2 years in prison.
• He ran a presidential campaign that bordered on the bizarre, skipping entire state primaries on the premise that Rudy just couldn't lose.

Stack on top of that any number of headline-grabbing personal and professional decisions (the recent kick-up about his aggressive, divisive campaigning on Mayor Bloomberg's behalf comes to mind) and most reasonable people would conclude that 2010, just like 2008 and 2002, will not be Rudy Giuliani's year.

It's hard for me to understand who might be advising Rudy Giuliani these days, other than the notable firm Rudy Giuliani's Ego LLC. If he really wants to prove he's back in the game of leadership, perhaps the best step to take right now might be, well, to exercise some leadership, to spend time building a positive reputation based on something other than visible leadership during a terrible time. Now is not the time to launch another campaign based on the same set of accomplishments and skills that haven't managed to win over the state or the country yet.

To run again with the same résumé as always is the ultimate show of arrogance. Go out and do something, Giuliani, instead of trading on a name that's lost significant value since its high-water mark in 2001. Then come back and use the experience to lead.