Posted on 12/08/2006 2:36:29 PM PST by Uncledave
A Vote for Rudy Why Giuliani should be president
RICHARD BROOKHISER
I have voted against Rudy Giuliani, and I have voted for him. Voting for him is better; it’s what I hope conservatives, Republicans, and Americans will do in 2008.
Giuliani formed a presidential exploratory committee after the midterm elections, formally entering campaign land, in which every utterance by and about him will be analyzed and its potential effect polled. Not that it hasn’t been going on for years. My favorite of the early reax to Rudy was flagged by columnist Deroy Murdock: An anti-Giuliani website, SayNoToRudy.org, posted by social conservatives in Ohio, pulled the plug on itself after deciding that “Mr. Giuliani is truly a committed Republican and an accomplished conservative on many issues.” But in estimating Giuliani’s worth it is less useful to say what people say about him; more useful to examine his past, and his character.
Giuliani won his first election in 1993, in his second race for mayor of New York. He had made his name as a scourge of high-profile criminals when he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (1983–9), hammering the five families, crooked Democratic bosses, and Michael Milken. Yet conservatives had reason not to vote for him: His social views were liberal — he was for abortion and gay rights — and his opinions on political economy were untried. He ran with the endorsement of New York’s tiny Liberal party. To run against him, the less-tiny Conservative party picked George Marlin, a scholarly Catholic, and an investment banker who knew his financial nuts and bolts. (He is also a friend of mine.) Marlin could only tip the election to Democratic incumbent David Dinkins, but he made the case for the politics of purity: Hold out until we get Mr. Right, instead of holding our noses in the voting booth.
I heeded Marlin’s call, and so cast the unwisest vote of my life. Giuliani won in a close race, and then proceeded to save the city. When I see the shoals of kids in Union Square, fresh from their new NYU dorms or packed like sardines in nearby apartments, I know they cannot imagine what the square was like in 1993, when they were toddlers: raggedy bushes, lawns of packed dirt, and hollow-eyed weirdos muttering “Smokes, smokes.” New York’s poor neighborhoods were far worse, as innocents were robbed, murdered, and felled by the stray fusillades of drug dealers.
Everyone acknowledges Giuliani’s achievement. (Perhaps the most eloquent tribute is the silent imitation of his successor, Michael Bloomberg, who, despite his billionaire’s arrogance, has continued Giuliani’s success by continuing with his methods.) But how Giuliani succeeded initially is still not well understood.
Rudolph GiulianiAdmedia/Sipa The crime position of conservatives since the Sixties was simple: Jail the crooks. Candidate Marlin told audiences he would “put them on barges” if he had to. Yet Mario Cuomo, New York’s liberal Democratic governor, was building prisons at a great rate, and still the crime rate soared. The solution to New York’s (and the nation’s) crime problem lay in asking which crooks should be pursued, and what conclusions could be drawn from their activity. A revolution in policing had begun with a pair of academics, George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, and a handful of smart cops in New York and Boston — William Bratton, Jack Maple, John Timoney. They emphasized the importance of recapturing the public space by nabbing petty offenders who often turned out to be major ones, and by tracking the ebb and flow of crime patterns daily, the better to react quickly. But you had to have your ears open to know this was going on. City Journal, the policy magazine of the conservative urban-affairs think tank the Manhattan Institute, ran articles by Kelling and others on the new policing in the early Nineties. Fred Siegel, America’s only witty urbanologist, brought them to Mayor Dinkins’s attention. “He brushed me off.”
Not Giuliani. “He is much more wonkish and intellectual than people give him credit for,” Siegel says. “Because of the tough-guy exterior, they don’t notice. There is a lot of Newt in him: Let’s take this apart and see how it works.” Siegel also calls him “a Republican Clinton.” Clinton, who never held a position he would not betray? Siegel admits the difference. “Giuliani is not poll first and act later. He is, Let me figure this out and bring people along.”
The mayor of New York, unlike other mayors, is a powerful official, but he does not operate in a vacuum. Giuliani showed what Siegel calls “administrative imagination,” looking for “effective levers” in the bureaucracy, as opposed to “formal” ones. He cultivated members of the City Council — small fry, compared with congressmen, but with egos equally big. The courts he waited out. They were “wired for the ACLU,” as Siegel puts it, so Giuliani would stake out a position — e.g., zoning XXX shops into remote corners — then fight delaying actions when his policies were challenged. In the court of public opinion, he waged war on liberalism, as articulated by the New York Times. “He mocked them,” says Siegel, “he made fun of their assumptions.”
A FATAL DAY Despite his success and a smashing reelection in 1997 (I supported him this time, along with 57 percent of the voters), Giuliani’s two terms were boisterous. Imagine eight years of macaca wars. Then came 9/11.
Although everyone was surprised by it, Giuliani was well positioned to grasp what had happened, and to keep a grip on his understanding as the years passed. Giuliani had spoken of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in his first mayoral inaugural address, in a paean to Gotham spunk (“New Yorkers of the 1990s have the same ingenuity, sensitivity, talent, and courage that our ancestors had in building our great city”). The methods he had used to fight the mob turned out to be essential in cracking the Jersey City terror cell that planned the 1993 bombing, and other attacks. Andy McCarthy, lead prosecutor of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Blind Sheik, says that the Justice Department used Giuliani’s “RICO paradigm,” not focusing on “foot soldiers” but “peeling back the case” to “big organizations in time and space.” Most important was Giuliani’s moral clarity. Siegel’s wonk coexists with a man of passion. Giuliani “saw this issue early on as very black and white,” says McCarthy. “Part of what people who don’t like Rudy don’t like about him is how headstrong he is.” In 1995 Giuliani ejected Yasser Arafat from a Lincoln Center concert honoring the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. “Maybe we should wake people up to the way this terrorist is being romanticized.” After 9/11 he returned $10 million from a Saudi prince who had suggested that our Palestinian policy had helped cause the attack. In his speeches Giuliani dates the run-up to 9/11 from the 1985 murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian hijackers.
Then there is the x of leadership, which is more than smarts or passion, or even both together. Woody Allen said 80 percent of success is showing up. One hundred percent of leadership is showing up, and doing the right thing — and doing it again, and again, and again. As the years pass, more and more of those kids in Union Square cannot imagine having been in Union Square themselves in the days and weeks after 9/11, and what a witless mob we all were then. The firemen and cops wrote their heroism in ash. Giuliani told the rest of us that we were brave, and thereby encouraged us to be so. The one mistake he made in the aftermath was dallying with the possibility that Albany might waive New York City’s two-term limit, thus allowing him to run again (the terrorists had struck on Primary Day for the 2001 election). George Washington would not have made that mistake, but he couldn’t have done the rest of it better.
As in 1993, there are problems. Do you have a few hours? Giuliani is down-the-line pro-abortion, including even partial-birth abortions. “I don’t see my position on that changing,” he said in 1999. He opposes a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. “I don’t think it’s ripe for decision at this point,” he said in 2004. “I certainly wouldn’t support [a ban] at this time.” As mayor of New York he administered some of the nation’s toughest laws against gun ownership. His sabbatical from office-holding has allowed him to duck out of the white-hot immigration debate of the last year, but his long-term position has been refried Emma Lazarus. Siegel, his great booster, told National Review Online that Giuliani’s lax enforcement of immigration laws allowed “several of the [9/11] hijackers to operate comfortably in Brooklyn only a few blocks from my house.”
Then there are the personal problems, which are sometimes also political. Giuliani’s first marriage ended with an annulment that was risible even by the standards of the Catholic Church in modern America (he realized, after 14 years, that he and his wife were second cousins). His second marriage exploded in an ugly divorce. The third time may be the charm: Judith Nathan seems to have humanized him a bit, as did a brush with prostate cancer, the killer of his father. He needs humanizing. His ferocious dedication is the obverse of rigidity and repression. Did he repress his memory of his father’s criminal past when he went through his FBI clearances?
His personality is all of a piece. His wife may retrofit some virtues on him, but no one else will. His political problems sit there like turds in a punch bowl. What can social conservatives make of them?
Giuliani left himself some wiggle room in his remarks on gay marriage (“at this point,” “at this time”), and a casuist could find it on partial-birth abortion (“I don’t see . . .”). More important, all of his radioactive positions, except on immigration, might be modified by the men and women he nominated as judges. On the eve of the mid-term elections, Giuliani hailed Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito as model judges, “principled individuals who can be trusted to defend the original intent of the Constitution rather than trying to legislate their own political beliefs from the bench.” He called their appointments “signs of promises kept.”
Social conservatives will be keen to know whom Giuliani will promise to appoint. They already know where he is coming from, and many of them seem to support him nonetheless. The idea that Giuliani’s strong poll numbers will blow away once people learn his whole record is probably a fantasy. He has been on the national stage for 13 years, and what people don’t know they can infer from his incorrigible New York-ness. Many social conservatives have already made a calculation about leadership. The Romans said that in war the laws are silent. Neither Christians nor humanists can believe that. But in war one wants a war leader, who may be otherwise unacceptable. Early in World War II England picked a washed-up journalist with a lot of sleazy friends.
Rudy Giuliani saved a city with a larger population than Arizona, Massachusetts, or Virginia, the states of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and George Allen. He helped city and country take a harder blow than Pearl Harbor. These are two serious public achievements, which are two more than anyone else in the 2008 race, Republican or Democrat, can show. Achievement is not an infallible guide to performance in office. Abraham Lincoln, wrote the New York diarist George Templeton Strong, was nominated in 1860 “because he cut a great many rails,” and he did fine. But achievement or the lack of it is all fate lets us see of our candidates in advance. You can choose a leader. Or you can choose someone else.
Mr. Brookhiser, an NR senior editor, is the author, most recently, of What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers.
If he wins, he'll do it without my vote. I don't vote for liberals, regardless of party.
Ditto.
Add my ditto. If Rudy can win without the enthusiastic support of the conservative base--more power to him.
He shoould have 'taken out' Hillary in her reelection bid. He can spare us his efforts now. Good luck to him (especially getting the nomination withOUT the backing of the conservative base)!
He'll never get my vote either.
Abortion issues are not as close to the top of my list as terrorism is. Rudy will be extremly tough on Islamic Terrorism and that issue overshadows all others in my opinion. we could be facing the end of American civilation as we know if. Other issues will have to wait for now. Islam is on the march and we need someone with balls to be there to stop it ..Rudy is the guy .
Who would you voye for then ? Who has a chance that is .
I DO know this, though. I will NEVER vote for Hillary (or any democrat, for that matter), and I will NEVER vote for Rudy. If it comes down to a race between those two--I could care less who wins.
Rudy will win even without the WHINOs.
And even if it did--good luck again getting elected without the enthusiastic support of the conservative base (ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO TURNOUT--which WILL make the difference).
If the Republicans want to win--they best find someone that excites the conservative base. Otherwise, it will be another disaster like the '96 election was--where Dole created no excitement or enthusiasm at all.
"Abortion issues are not as close to the top of my list as terrorism is. Rudy will be extremly tough on Islamic Terrorism and that issue overshadows all others in my opinion. we could be facing the end of American civilation as we know if. Other issues will have to wait for now."
Are you serious? You don't care what domestic policys happen as long as an unpopular war in Iraq continues? I'll disagree. If I wanted a leftist who is strong on "Islamic terrorism" and grossly weak on domestic issues I'd vote for Lieberman.
I think he will too. He will appeal to a lot of crossover voters ... and lots of people will not vote for Hillary.
Me neither.
You still don't get it.I am not going to worry anymore about you folks getting your perfect candidate. Me, I am going to do what is needed to keep my family and America safe.
Enjoy your crusade.
No! It is you that doesn't get IT!
I am not ever going to vote for someone that can not command one iota of respect from me. Rudy or anyone else.
And BTW, it is my family that goes to war every day and puts their life on the line so that you can vote for whom ever you like.
There are NO perfect candidates. Have we EVER had one in this country? EVER????
But when it comes to IMPERFECT candidates--Rudy rates near the top (ref. abortion, gun control, gay issues, amnesty, big government, voting and supporting Mario Cuomo, not to mention his personal 'baggage'--which are minor in comparison to the six major issues I listed).
I really think we can find someone LESS imperfect than THAT!
Couldn't agree with you more! Since I campaigned for Goldwater as teenager as well, would say I could guess the age within a few years. :)
The usual anti-Rudy suspects that watch these threads like a hawk will answer right away.
I have been pleasantly surprised at the number on here that are thinking like we are -- a lot of common sense conservatives on this site IMHO!
I guess it's ok for 'those' usual suspects to be Rudy-apologists, but not for conservatives to make their case opposing him. Ahhhh,,,now I get it.
Actually I have been making a joke out of how fast the anti-Rudy group gets to the threads or replies they don't like. I have been here long enough to see a pattern! They are much nicer then some of the Freepers in the past. We have honest disagreements but no flame wars. Been in those as well in the past.
BTW, I am a conservative going back to Goldwater and I support Rudy because of the leadership that he has shown. He has a backbone and is not kumbaya which means a lot to me! I am tired of 'compassionate conservatism' and 'kumbaya' both which irritate me to no end right now.
Have a hunch if more Freepers had observed our State House in the last session and some of the most idiotic bills that were debated, you would be feeling the same way. Infrastructure took a backseat to social issues even though our state was burning. With all the 'feel good' bills, they couldn't pass a budget and had to go in an extra session (where they got paid more money). Of course we are the State where the previous legislature gave a tax rebate which we had to claim on our income tax -- all of $90 and we had to pay extra tax! Took a ton of money to process and mail the stupid rebate but everyone took credit. This fiscal conservative has had it!
This past year in OK from the State House to the pro-life disruptors on campus to the threats made when a parade name was changed to holiday three parades ago but last year and this year it became a central issue it cost us statewide elections. How do I know about the threats? I received some of them after I dared say the name of the parade didn't make any difference as we were putting Christmas back in the parade with our float. All the threats were from the self-identified, religious right,'social' conservatives some who taught at the Christian school and were nasty with their comments. Told my daughter who answered the phone to get on the next boat back to Italy because her ilk are not wanted here. These people go to church every Sunday, send their kids to a Christian school, and were some of the nastiest people I have ever dealt with and I know who they are and who was behind them. Those are only a few of the low lights of the last two year. Try getting a virus sent to your computer several times a day for almost a month until it was turned over to the authorities.
After being involved with these people for the last two years as a party official, I do not want a social conservative as our candidate for President or we are going to take a beating because of their temperment and 'my way or no way' which is worse then I ever thought it could be. When you observe it up close and personal, it paints a whole different picture and it is not a pretty one.
I am pro-life personally but after the past two years you will NEVER find me shoving it at anyone. What I have witnessed made me stop and think the damage that has been done and how some people who would become pro-life won't because of the irrational behavior of some people getting right in their face. Those people on campus cost us votes in the 2006 election. You have to change people's hearts and calling them all kinds of names when don't even know them isn't the way to do things.
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