I tried to save the president from all this embarrassment. Believe me, I tried.

I got started a full nine days ago, even before George W. Bush had formally nominated Bernie Kerik as head of Homeland Security for the whole United States. I warned the president and his people in no uncertain terms.

Here's what I wrote about the former New York police commissioner in the Newsday for Dec. 3:

"He's a personal and professional time bomb the Bushies will learn to regret. Don't say I didn't warn you, guys!"

Could I have been any plainer than that?

So now, I'm trying to think of a nice way to put this. How 'bout:

Tick, tick, tick ... KA-BOOM!

Accurately and vividly, I sounded my alarm about this "hard-charging, thick-necked, shaved-head lightweight" and his relentless career climb.

Kerik was, I wrote in that first column and a second one, a "campaign bodyguard to Rudy Giuliani," an "errand boy for the Saudi royal family," an "energetic exploiter of Sept. 11th tragedy" and a "tough-talking publicity-hound vowing to bring law and order to Iraq -- then hightailing it out of there after a disastrous 14 weeks, leaving the place far less safe than he found it."

Hey, I'm not here to mince words!

Kerik, after all, was Bush's choice for a pretty important position. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he'd have been the man who "stands between Osama bin Laden and our good-night sleep," to quote myself again.

Yikes!

So of course, I had no choice but to lay out in efficient language and appropriate detail a few ripe questions that the people in Washington would have done well to ask.

There's not enough room here to recount every misjudgment, scandal and power grab that characterized the man's rapid rise. I don't believe in wasting bullets on dead guys. As far as I can tell, Bernie isn't moving anymore.

Too bad the people in the White House didn't pay attention when it could have helped them. Too bad the members of the Senate, including the two from New York, also turned away.

Everyone in Washington was saying Kerik was the guy for Homeland Security. Hero of 9/11. Slasher of crime in New York City. A man who could really get things done. You have to figure all of them were blinded by the strong endorsement from Giuliani, Kerik's current business partner and longtime after-hours pal.

And now look at the mess they're cleaning up.

It came as a big surprise to some when Kerik's time ran out Friday night, but not to those who really know the man. Any more than his explanation did.

He tried to blame his nanny for everything. He said that he'd just discovered that the nice woman caring for his children might be in the United States illegally. He said he'd also just discovered that he hadn't been paying the taxes he owed on her.

Certainly, that could raise some questions for a high government official whose duties included supervising the nation's immigration laws. He'd be locking up hardworking immigrants for doing exactly what was happening in his very own home.

Try explaining that to some Nigerian cabbie or Mexican gardener.

But truth to tell, Kerik's "nanny problem" was about the least-explosive item on his real-life resume. That at least could be chalked up to humanity or forgetfulness.

It was all the other questions that made Bernie Kerik so wrong for the job.

He had a great rags-to-riches story: Son of a prostitute. High-school dropout. Ambitious law-enforcement boss. Rake-it-in businessman. But a tangled personal life and all the questions about his career are what really did Kerik in. Everywhere you looked around him was a new pile of stink.

A daughter he'd abandoned in Korea. A lawsuit over a subordinate he'd allegedly taken a shine to at the Correction Department. A swirl of ugly stories about his dating life.

There was that $6-million stock bonanza from a stun-gun company he got without investing a cent. There was nearly $1 million in public tobacco rebates funneled into a foundation he ran. There were city ethics penalties for assigning on-duty police detectives to research his autobiography. There were homicide detectives turned into a personal lost-and-found squad the night his publisher's cell phone disappeared.

Oh, the stuff just kept coming. The personal bankruptcy. The unexplained withdrawal from Iraq.

Given all of it, if this were me or you, wouldn't we want to blame the nanny?

Kerik put it blandly in the letter he sent to President Bush.

"I am convinced that, for personal reasons, moving forward would not be in the best interests of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people."

Thanks, Bernie. You got that much right.

© 2004 Newsday, Inc.