Why Rudy Giuliani Really Shouldn’t be President

Special Guests Blog ^ | Marach 8.2007 | Jim Sleeper

[Angel]

The deluge of commentary on Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential prospects has forced me finally to break my long silence about the man. Somebody’s gotta say it: He shouldn’t be president, not because he’s too “liberal” or “conservative,” or because his positions on social issues have been heterodox, or because he seems tone-deaf on race, or because his family life has been messy, or because he’s sometimes been as crass an opportunist as almost every other politician of note. Rudy Giuliani shouldn’t be president for reasons more profoundly troubling. Maybe you had to be with him at the start of his electoral career to see them clearly.

Throughout the fall, 1993 New York mayoral campaigns, I tried harder than any other columnist I know of to convince left-liberal friends and everyone else that Giuliani would win and probably should.

In the Daily News, the New Republic, and on cable and network TV, I insisted it had come to this because racial “Rainbow” and welfare-state politics were imploding nationwide, not just in New York and not only thanks to racists, Ronald Reagan, or robber barons. One didn’t have to share all of Giuliani’s “colorblind,” “law-and-order,” and free-market presumptions to want big shifts in liberal Democratic paradigms and to see that some of those shifts would require a political battering ram, not a scalpel.

I spent a lot of time with Giuliani during the 1993 campaign and his first year in City Hall, and while a dozen of my columns criticized him sharply for presuming far too much, I defended most of his record to the end of his tenure. He forced New York, that great capital of “root cause” explanations for every social problem, to get real about remedies that work, at least for now, in the world as we know it. I saw Al Sharpton blink as I told him in a debate that twice as many New Yorkers had been felled by police bullets during David Dinkins’ four-year mayoralty as during Giuliani’s then-seven years and that the drop in all murders meant that at least two thousand black and Hispanic New Yorkers who’d have been dead were up and walking around.

Giuliani’s successes ranged well beyond crime reduction. As late as July, 2001, when his personal and political blunders had eclipsed those gains and he had only a lame duck’s six months to go, I insisted in a New York Observer column that he’d facilitated housing, entrepreneurial, and employment gains for people whose loudest-mouthed advocates called him a racist reactionary. James Chapin, the late democratic socialist savant, considered Giuliani a “progressive conservative” like Teddy Roosevelt, who was a New York police commissioner before becoming Vice President and President.

Yet Giuliani’s methods and motives suggest he couldn’t carry his skills and experience to the White House without damaging this country. Two problems run deeper than the current likely “horse race” liabilities, such as his social views and family history.

The first serious problem is structural and political: A man who fought the inherent limits of his mayoral office as fanatically as Giuliani would construe presidential prerogatives so broadly he’d make George Bush’s notions of “unitary” executive power seem soft.

Even in the 1980s, as an assistant attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department and U.S. Attorney in New York, Giuliani was imperious and overreaching. He "perp-walked" Wall Streeters right out of their offices in dramatic prosecutions that failed. He made the troubled daughter of a state judge, Hortense Gabel, testify against her mother and former Miss America Bess Meyerson in a failed prosecution charging, among other things, that Meyerson had hired the judge’s daughter to bribe her into helping “expedite” a messy divorce case. The jury was so put off by Giuliani’s tactics that it acquitted all concerned, as the Washington Post recalled ten years later in assessing Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s subpoena of Monica Lewinsky’s mother to testify against her daughter.

At least, as U.S. Attorney, Giuliani served at the pleasure of the President and had to defer to federal judges. Were he the President, U.S. Attorneys would serve at his pleasure -- a dangerous arrangement in the wrong hands, we’ve learned -- and he’d pick the judges to whom prosecutors defer.

As mayor, Giuliani fielded his closest aides like a fast and sometimes brutal hockey team, micro-managing and bludgeoning city agencies and even agencies that weren’t his, like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Board of Education. They deserved it richly enough to make his bravado thrilling to many of us, but it wasn’t very productive. And while this Savonarola disdained even would-be allies in other branches of government, he wasn’t above cutting indefensible deals with crony contractors and pandering shamelessly to some Hispanics, orthodox Jews, and other favored constituencies.

Even the credit he claimed for transportation, housing and safety improvements belongs partly and sometimes wholly to predecessors’ decisions and to economic good luck: As he left office the New York Times noted that on his first day as mayor in 1994, the Dow Jones had stood at 3754.09, while on his last day, Dec. 31, 2001, it opened at 10,136.99: “For most of his tenure, the city’s treasury gushed with revenues generated by Wall Street.” Dinkins had had to struggle through the after-effects the huge crash of 1987.

Remarkable though Giuliani’s mayoral record remains, it’s complicated further by more than socio-economic circumstances and structural constraints. Ironically, it was his most heroic moments as mayor that spotlighted his deepest presidential liability. Fred Siegel, author of the Giuliani-touting Prince of the City, posed the problem recently when he wondered why, after Giuliani’s 1997 mayoral reelection, with the city buoyed by its new safety and economic success, he wasn’t “able to turn his Churchillian political personality down a few notches."

I’ll tell you why: Giuliani’s 9/11 performance was sublime for the unnerving reason that he’d been rehearsing for it all his adult life and remained trapped in that stage role. When his oldest friend and deputy mayor Peter Powers told me in 1994 that 16-year-old Rudy had started an opera club at Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn, I didn’t have to connect too many of the dots I’d been seeing to begin noticing that Giuliani at times acted like an opera fanatic who’s living in a libretto as much as in the real world.

In private, Rudy can contemplate the human comedy with a Machiavellian prince’s supple wit. But when he walks on stage, he tenses up so much that even his efforts to lighten up seem labored. What drove him as mayor was a zealot’s graceless division of everyone into friend or foe and his snarling, sometimes histrionic, vilifications of the foes. Those are operatic emotions, beneath the civic dignity of a great city and its chief magistrate.

Of course, I know more than a few New Yorkers who deserve the Rudy treatment, but only on 9/11 did the city really become as operatic as the inside of Rudy’s mind. For once, New York re-arranged itself into a stage fit for, say, Rossini’s “Le Siege de Corinth” or some dark, nationalist epic by Verdi or Puccini that ends with bodies strewn all over and the tragic but noble hero grieving for his devastated people and, perhaps, foretelling a new dawn.

Giuliani called the Metropolitan Opera only a few days after 9/11 and insisted its performances resume. At the first of these, the orchestra, striking up a few well-known chords, brought the entire cast, Met administrative, secretarial, and custodial staff (who'd come up onstage), and the capacity audience to their feet to sing “The Star Spangled Banner” with unprecedented passion. A few days later Giuliani proposed that his term be extended on an “emergency” basis beyond its lawful end on January 1, 2002. (It wasn’t, and the city did as well as it could have, anyway.)

Should this country suffer another devastating attack before the 2008 primaries are over, Giuliani’s presidential prospects may soar beyond recalling. But the very Constitutional notion of recall could soar away with them. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Giuliani was right for his time and on a stage with built-in limits. But we shouldn’t have to make him the next President to learn why even a grateful Britain dumped Churchill in its first major election after V-E day.

[CWOJackson]

The irony is posted photos of Guliani now out number those of Coulter. While not exactly my taste, I have to admit that at least Rudy has a figure.

[nopardons]

It's a pity, not to mention PATHETIC, that you are now a proponent of SPAM and are making excuses for the use of it!

Once upon a time on FR, people got banned for SPAMMING. Now, some people are not only allowed to break every single rule FR has ever has, but egged on to do so.

Propaganda, things taken completely out of context, and lies SPAMMED to thread after thread doesn't make any of it true.

[nopardons]

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM......................

[nopardons]

Hey SPAMMY.....having fun, are you? LOL

[nopardons]

And he's better looking than she is! :-)

[servantboy777]

"is that it? is this the best this author's got?"

The piece mentioned much more than executive power that would keep me from voting for Rudy.

[SkyPilot]

Thanks for the details. At least it was for charity.

He still looked stupid. Ronald Reagan never wore a dress.

As far as calling me and this phantom army of "my ilk" you referred to - I am not allied with anyone and I don't belong to any Anti-Rudy network or conspiracy.

When I first saw the title of this thread, that ridiculous image of him dressed in drag immediately came to mind.

I won't support him for a myriad of reasons: abortion, gun control, and homosexual "marriage" all being part and parcel of the reasons why.

[Barnacle]

Giuliani/Clinton/Dem vs. GOP Platform Comparison
Issue	Giuliani	Clinton	Dem Platform	GOP Platform
Abortion on Demand	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Partial Birth Abortion	Supports Opposed NY ban	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Roe v. Wade	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Taxpayer Funded Abortions	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Embryonic Stem Cell Research	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Federal Marriage Amendment	Opposes	Opposes	Opposes Defined at state level	Supports
Gay Domestic Partnership/ Civil Unions	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Openly Gay Military	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Defense of Marriage Act	Opposes	Opposes	Opposes	Supports
Amnesty for Illegal Aliens	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Special Path to Citizenship for Illegal Aliens	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Tough Penalties for Employers of Illegal Aliens	Opposes	Opposes	Opposes	Supports
Sanctuary Cities/ Ignoring Immigration Law	Supports	Supports	Supports	Opposes
Protecting 2nd Amendment	Opposes	Opposes	Opposes Supports bans	Supports
Confiscating Guns	Supports Confiscated as mayor. Even bragged.	Supports	Supports Supports bans	Opposes
'Assault' Weapons Ban	Supports	Supports	Supports
Frivolous Lawsuits Against Gun Makers	Supports Filed One Himself	Supports		Opposes
Gun Registration/Licenses	Supports	Supports		Opposes
War in Afghanistan	Supports	Supports Voted for it	Supports	Supports
War in Iraq	Supports	Supports Voted for it	Supports Weak support	Supports
Patriot Act	Supports	Supports Voted for it 2001 & 2006	Opposes	Supports

[nopardons]

And just HOW do you know that Reagan never wore a dress?

He belonged to the BOHEMIAN GROVE and I know that THEY dress up in all kinds of costumes and it isn't for charity.

It wouldn't surprise me, in the least, if Reagan dressed up in all kinds of costumes, to do skits, when governor of California. Most of these charity dinners, involving politicos and the MSM used to be kept quite and out of sight of the general public.

Chicago has the same kind of dinner & show, every year. That only became known to the public in very recent time.

America's best and oldest boarding schools hand colleges had HAIRY LEG SHOWS, from the time we were just a bunch of colonies and do to this day. It has, by this time, filtered down through ALL social strata, with public high schools and state colleges having them, for many decades, now.

Pssssssssssssssssssst.......he was SUPPOSED TO LOOK SILLY! This is a burlesque, in the original meaning of the word.

By posting that picture, you became a full member of FR's Rudy pictures in costume "army".

Anyone attempting to use that picture or similar ones, to impugn and defame Rudy ( especially those who don't know anything at all about the origins of same ) is doing him/herself a disservice and making FR look ridiculous to boot.

[dmw]

:)

[Delphinium]

I'm foolish now because I think rural folks think clearer?

You should try some fresh air and fresh water, it might make a huge difference:)

[ZULU]

Thank you.

[ZULU]

I'd support Thompson, Rice, Hunter, Gingrich, King of Iowa, or Tancredo. I think they have good credentials philosophically.

I'd even support Rudy in second place with any of the above.

But I have misgivings about voting for a man who wants to take away my guns, has no problem with abortion, supports illegal invaders, has no demonstrated track record or first hand knowledge of foreign policy or military matters and has demostrated such an obtuseness in situations where he was so obviously wrong.

But NEVER is not really an acceptable word in politics. There is still a lot of time to contemplate and see how things "shake out".

AS for HIllery versus Obama, I think there is a fundamental difference between the two, even though I am no fan of Obama's by a long stretch. And that is that the Clintons would KILL - LITERALLY to get elected, and her husband and she probably have done so already in the past.

[nopardons]

Gee whiz, I'm so glad that you post your inane assumptions, as though they were facts; really I am! LOL

I have plenty of fresh air where I live and my very own, unpolluted, extremely deep ( many hundreds of feet deep ) well for water. My water is probably a whole lot purer than the water you drink, pet. :-)

[SkyPilot]

And just HOW do you know that Reagan never wore a dress?

Show me a photo of him in one. Otherwise, stop overreaching.

You didn't even refute what I said about Giuliani's liberal record on the issues of homosexual "marriage", gun control, and abortion (the slaughter of the innocent).

That speaks volumes.

I told you - I won't support him for that. Wearing a dress is simply grist for the mill. I will not even touch his serial marriages.

Moreover, let's discuss something called "politics." His decision to dress up in drag was a terrible one. Let me ask you, if Edwards dressed up as a woman, people on this board would slaughter him over it. I have news for you - the Democrats will also.

Face it - that decision by Rudy was his Michael Dukakis moment.

In politics, you don't do things like this and not expect it to haunt you:

The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and he that is sweet in words, shall attain to greater things.

Proverbs 16:21

[Fierce Allegiance]

my very own, unpolluted, extremely deep ( many hundreds of feet deep ) well for water. My water is probably a whole lot purer than the water you drink, pet. :-)

The depth of the well rarely has anything to do with purity, in fact, given you location, you are probably drinking water that is quite high in sodium. Municiple water systems are required to meet federal systems, private wells are not. Any claims of purity are just pure wishful thinking. Deep wells are, however, far better than surface water wells.

[Fierce Allegiance]

It's pretty PATHETIC when information about liberalism on a conservative forum is considered spam.

It's simply pathetic that all these liberals are allowed to remain here on FR attacking conservatives as a way to compare their liberal candidate.

Let's face it, Rusy is a horrendous GOP candidate, and all those who support him are either uninformed or not conservatives. Sure, FR can tolerate the uninformed for a time, buit there is no place on FR for anti-conservative trolls.

[Old_Mil]

I cannot believe that they would not do everything to stop Hillary at all costs.

Your presumption is quite wrong. In a general election that pits Hillary against Rudy, my effort will be aimed at defeating Rudy.

[Beckwith]

The reason he should be president:

He can win.

[Fierce Allegiance]

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