Posted on 03/10/2007 9:24:06 PM PST by 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.
Those sound like excellent reasons to me.
Blah blah blah. Bottom line is the south is not going to buy him. Too New York, problems with social life.Maybe as attorney general, but he wouldn't accept that. Look who has been the elected president for the past 22 years. Southerners or californians.
Even Brownback polled 41% to Hellory's 46% yesterday and he is a 1% in the primary. Any Republican that does not lose the base can beat her.
She polls at 48% negitive with likely voters still and cannot win without spliting the consevative base vote of the Republicans. Her only hope is someone like McInsane or Jullie-Annie splits the conservative base of the party. Why do you think the media, who's around 90% liberal dem, keep pushing them?
The pro-life and pro-gun groups are not going to vote for Rudy, period. I believe the Republicans can write off maybe 10 to 15 million votes out of their base if he gets the nomination.
My guess has been a loss of 10 to 15 million base votes because of the pro-life and gun control issues. 2008 could be the year the Libertarians get 15% or 20% of the vote and I'm a registered Republican...
Guiliani and McCain are Hillary's only hope since she cannot poll less than a 48% negitive with likely voters. That's why the media keeps pushing them...
It'll change: Salt Lake City is like New York City—as of last month. :-(
2. Why would I oppose her running for a nomination?
Running? You're changing your terminology in mid-argument.
Any real conservative would oppose Rudy's run for the nomination.
I think its more likely she beat him.
If he beat her it might be considered animal cruelty.
The kind of people who are falsely portrayed by the MSM as marrying their cousins.
Here's the irony: Rudy actually did marry his cousin.
Meant #89 for you.
Good morning! I just let it slide. I'm used to people looking down on me because of where I live and of course, I'm just a truck driver. It doesn't bother me at all! But thanks for your defense, I appreciate it!
If we stop the rush to judgement and see who else might join the race, we might find someone outside the current field. Personally, I still like Duncan Hunter. I also like Jim Gilmore a great deal even though he's in the exploratory stage right now. I could vote for Fred Thompson, and I think many conservatives who couldn't vote for Mr. Giuliani could vote for Fred Thompson. I think the same is true of Mitt Romney. I don't like Mike Huckabee, but I could support him as could many others. Newt Gingrich would have a hard time winning the general election, but he's another possibility.
One big mistake we're making is front-loading the primaries so much. Long primaries don't weaken a good candidate. Ronald Reagan had a long, hard fight to the nomination, and he won big. On the other side of the coin, Bill Clinton had a long fight for the Democrat nomination in 1992, and that fight only strengthened him for the general election. We need to change the primary schedule if we can and never do this foolishness again. We need to let the nominee be decided by plenty of primaries that give the primary voters a good chance to meet candidates and make decisions.
Bill
I stand corrected. I appreciate and thank you for your setting me straight. I am one who values truth. Although I did say I assume (suggesting it was not necessarily fact), I should not have put this statement in. In fact it detracts from my main point which is the article if anything makes a better case why Rudy should be president than why not.
What does that have to do with the fact that the Left calls Giuliani, Adolph Ghouliani and compares him to Hitler? The fact is, he is hated by Liberals. He's considered to be a racist and a right-wing extremist. Go to DU or any Liberal blog and see what they say about Giuliani. Why don't you suggest to them that he is one of them. They'll think you're crazy. I read a posting on a Leftist blog last week in which someone said that Giuliani should be assassinated because he's a would-be right-wing dictator.
The hell he's not. Virtually all of his policies reflect the kind of state control specifically exerted by Italian fascists in the 1930s, and were sold with similar justification, principally public safety and order.
Ronald Reagan believed in people possessing the ability to defend themselves. Giuliani wants the police to have that exclusive power while disarming the citizenry, nor is he shy about trampling the Constitution to get there. The two are miles apart.
You miss the point. Reagan was seen as a would-be dictator by the Left. His law and order policies were called fascist by the Left. When he became President, I heard Liberals say that he would set up concentration camps for anyone who opposed him. The same kinds of ridiculous and hysterical claims are being made about Giuliani. In the 8 years that he was my Mayor, I never feared that he would violate my rights in the way you seem to say. I don't believe in gun control at all. He's wrong about that issue. But, that doesn't mean he's like Hitler.
You expressed perfectly the misgivings many have about Rudy.
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