The Liberal Candidate

Is Rudy Giuliani a new Barry Goldwater or a new Bobby Kennedy?

David Weigel from the December 2007 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

Dinkins’ problems could be traced to his diffident public image, the way he handled the Crown Heights riot (when a rabbinical student was murdered by young blacks and the mayor was slow to respond), the way he doled out city jobs based on race, the way he alternately feuded with or got played by the self-appointed black spokesman Al Sharpton. Giuliani created a very different image. Eight days after being sworn in he ordered police to search a Nation of Islam mosque where the faithful were holding a police radio and gun. Black leaders called him a fascist; Giuliani told them to “learn how to discipline themselves in the way in which they speak.”

It was another minor battle, but Giuliani understood the power of small victories. Voters had just rejected a mayor who shied away from confrontations, called the city a “glorious mosaic” of races, and seemed uncomfortable ordering around police, even as he was seeking the funds to put more of them on the beat. The city’s Democratic leaders had never grown comfortable with Dinkins either. Giuliani’s display of power made him look like a man they could do business with. “We worked together a lot more than we clashed,” remembers the Queens Democrat Peter Vallone, former speaker of the New York City Council. “I recognized early on that this was a brilliant guy. I still call him the brain of the city.”

Giuliani certainly was able to outfox Vallone’s colleagues. In Leadership Giuliani boasts about “promising strategically” in budget fights, projecting the worst possible scenario if the city didn’t act on his team’s recommendations. In 1993 he warned the city council that a $2.3 billion budget shortfall would bulge to $3.4 billion in five years. The city’s fiscal picture was suddenly more than grim; it was a crisis. And how could the city’s Democratic politicians drag their feet in the face of a crisis? It was the first effective use of a technique the mayor would use again and again: “By assuming low revenues,” Giuliani wrote in 2002, “I could forcefully argue against unnecessary expenditures and maintain a frugal culture.”

The stage was set for Giuliani’s first tax cut, and he picked a tax Democrats and their union backers were willing to attack: the 21.5 percent levy on hotel rooms, a Frankenstein’s monster of five state and local fees. He convinced the state legislature and the city council to slash it by a third. Small taxes fell under the guillotine. Thirteen years later, according to Kudlow, Giuliani would tell his old economic adviser that the tax cuts “proved that the Laffer curve works in the real world.” At the start of his second term Giuliani orchestrated two “sales tax vacations,” single days when consumers didn’t have to pay sales taxes, and watched store receipts surge. It became that much harder for restive city council members to argue against him.

The tax cuts—by the end of his tenure, 23 taxes were slashed or snuffed out—were largely popular. Welfare reform was tougher: Giuliani actually opposed the 1996 federal welfare reform bill on the grounds that it unfairly penalized illegal immigrants and didn’t provide day care for welfare-to-work clients. But he had almost unilateral powers to kick off his own reforms. City Hall commanded welfare administrators to recertify everyone who claimed a check, and 20 percent of recipients, revealed as frauds, fell off the rolls. Slowly, inexorably, the mayor changed the city’s welfare programs into job programs that connected people on the dole with public- and private-sector work. By the end of his mayoralty welfare rolls were nearly halved, from more than 1.1 million names to under 600,000. If his 2008 opponents have seen an opening to attack him for his hedging on federal welfare reform, they haven’t dared to use it.

The Second Term
Giuliani clashed publicly and privately with Police Commissioner Bratton, feuding over details as small as a promotion ceremony Bratton held without inviting the mayor. Before Giuliani fired him in 1995, polls showed most of the city giving Bratton credit for the crime drop. That was never again the case, and until Giuliani won a crushing re-election in 1997, those who tried to make an issue out of the mayor’s ego were dismissed as churls. Giuliani gave them more to work with after he won. New York magazine rolled out a series of post-election bus ads that tweaked the mayor by calling itself “possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for.” The mayor directed the Metropolitan Transit Authority to strip the ads. New York sued the MTA and won; Giuliani, incredibly, appealed to the 2nd Circuit Court.

It was the perfect overture to Giuliani’s second term, four years when the city boomed and its mayor’s goals became increasingly erratic. Before the election, Giuliani expanded the city’s war on drugs, proposing the hiring of 1,000 new cops to tackle drug crimes. During the campaign he ratcheted up an assault on porn shops (often used, to be sure, as criminal fronts) and pilloried his Democratic opponent, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, when she argued that the shops gave some neighborhoods “character.” After the election he confounded New Yorkers by focusing his energy on petty “quality of life” crimes. The connection between dilapidated Mad Max storefronts and violent crime was obvious and intuitive. It was harder to draw a straight line from jaywalking to knifepoint mugging.

A 1998 City Journal article by New York Post editorial writer Jonathan Foreman called “Toward a More Civil City” told Giuliani where he wanted to go. “Quality of life,” Giuliani said in February 1998, “from the beginning, was not an isolated campaign but an intrinsic part of our overall strategy to increase public safety, revive the City, and create a common social culture.” The solutions he proposed were immediately controversial: speed bumps to slow down traffic, harsher penalties for reckless bicyclists, a crackdown on jaywalkers. The resemblance to the problems described in Foreman’s article was slight.

“It was interesting,” Foreman remembers, “because he took some of the article and not the rest of it. The article was about the city leading the way on civility, which meant going after petty crimes, but it also meant public officials using sir and ma’am and easing tensions at that level of society. That was never taken up.” The “civil society” effort was ridiculed by the press. “I think his own, authoritarian-seeming personality in some ways undermined the public perception of the policies,” Foreman says.

But in the weeks after the September 11 attacks the mayor’s approval ratings hit the stratosphere: One New York Times poll suggested that almost 60 percent of the city would give him a third term if not for term limits. Fifteen percent of Republican voters wrote his name on their ballots in the October primary. Giuliani had the chance to play Cincinnatus and assure the city it could go on without him. He didn’t take it. “I couldn’t walk away,” he told CBS News anchor Dan Rather in 2001. “I would feel like I was walking out on my duty and obligation.” He lobbied publicly for a three-month extension of his term; when that hit resistance, he mulled an offer from the state’s Conservative Party to run as its candidate for a new four-year term. Both ideas were scrapped by the Democrat-controlled state Assembly, which refused to change the constitution.

9/11
Of course, Giuliani’s push for more time in office isn’t what most people remember about the end of his time as mayor. His response to the 9/11 attacks utterly transformed his reputation. All the traits that had irritated his enemies—grandstanding, linking himself to the city’s police force—became assets again. Six years later the halo has hardly dimmed. Explosive reports about the poor disaster planning that preceded the attack and broadsides from the International Association of Firefighters (on topics such as the slow recovery of corpses from the debris) have grabbed some headlines and cable news coverage, then been swiftly forgotten.

It had been a long while since a national politician had to perform on the spot like that, sans speechwriters, and came over so convincingly. More than anyone else, it recalled Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Kennedy spoke without notes and delivered a tear-wrenching speech before a mostly black audience in Indianapolis about tolerance and forgiveness that served as King’s eulogy. Giuliani owned 9/11 in the same way. His masterful press conference hours after the attack even echoed Kennedy’s message to would-be rioters in the King aftermath.

“Nobody should blame any group of people or any nationality or any ethnic group,” Giuliani said. “The particular individuals responsible or the groups responsible, that’s up to law enforcement and it’s up to the United States government to figure out. And citizens of New York should, even if they have anger, which is understandable, and very, very strong emotions about this, it isn’t their place to get involved in this. Then they’re just participating in the kind of activity we just witnessed. And New Yorkers are not like that.”

It was powerful stuff, and not just because of the way the White House bungled its immediate public response to the attacks and created a vacuum for Giuliani. (President Bush made a statement 30 minutes after the attacks and then disappeared for 11 hours.) The mayor’s performance cut against an image that had been crafted over 30 years. Giuliani was tough but never empathetic. Sometimes his toughness had led to cruel comments and gaffes. In 1999, when special NYPD units killed young black club-goer Patrick Dorismond, Giuliani immediately sided with police, averring that the deceased was “no altar boy”; he was humiliated when it came out that Dorismond had in fact lit the altar at his church.

New Yorkers were stunned and enthralled by the empathy that Giuliani summoned in the month of the 9/11 attacks. They were shocked to find themselves liking him again.

Comments

|11.14.07 @ 6:09PM|#

I have nothing of interest to offer but just wanted to say that was a very good piece, David.

|11.14.07 @ 6:14PM|#

"Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority."

That says it all. This man must not become our next president, no way, no how, under any circumstances.

|11.14.07 @ 6:15PM|#

I think it was a good piece, but I'm not sure why Weigel called him the liberal candidate. The article makes it clear Giuliani has become a neoconservative of sorts. And his fondness for Bobby Kennedy aside, he doesn't seem to support the causes that most strongly motivate contemporary liberals: abortion rights (he would appoint another Scalia, not another Ginsberg), universal health care, and a commitment to diversity.

Maybe "The Prosecutorial Candidate" would have been a better title?

|11.14.07 @ 6:15PM|#

I mean, Orwellian in its madness. Fucking Orwellian.

|11.14.07 @ 6:56PM|#

Guliani, god willing, will not win the presidency.

And Ashish, neoconservatives are liberals who got kicked out of the sandbox for smashing up everyone elses toys. Look how many ex-communists, socialists are in the neoconservative ranks and how callously they pursue power as an ends. Nobody, anywhere, should aspire to be a neoconservative.

Ska|11.14.07 @ 7:16PM|#

Yeah, JK, that comment is really scary. Hopefully there are only a handful of people who agree with it. Because we all know there are people who do.

|11.14.07 @ 7:19PM|#

If, as the Las Vegas odds makers expect, it comes down to Hillary vs. Rudy, I'm voting for Clinton, part two. I despise the woman.

You'll notice that Ron Paul is off the board.

duster|11.14.07 @ 7:45PM|#

Bobby Kennedy spoke out agaist drug prohibition, in pointing out that it benefitted organized crime and made criminals out of ordinary citizens. I wish Rudy were a little more like him in that way, but it doesn't jibe with his 'Freedom = Submission' equation. More than a handful of people agree with that, and they're the people politicians pretend to care about most.

CKG|11.14.07 @ 8:57PM|#

This is going to be very difficult, but I think if it comes down to Hillary versus Rudy, I'll have to back Hillary too. Neither give a damn about freedom, and so with either one, we'll have some dark years ahead. But at least Hillary is calculating enough that she won't fuck up. Rudy is so committed to his vision of the "War on Terror" as this era's Cold War, that he will never give up, even if the Middle East winds up becoming a melted-down puddle of radioactivity. Rudy will keep on fighting at all costs. Even despite this, there is a little part of me that still sort of likes him. Oddly enough. Not enough for me to actually vote for him, but just a bit.

Andrew|11.14.07 @ 9:01PM|#

Above all, great article. As someone who worked in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I can tell you this: Things changed under Giuliani, generally for the better.

There is an autocratic side, yes. But then, this trait was perfect in NYC, long-called the "ungovernable city." You needed a butt-kicked like Rudy G. to whip it into shape. (And by "shape," I mean basic things like the ability to walk down a street at night with a reasonable assumption that you will NOT be mugged, harrassed, swindled etc.).

The question then before the house is: Can a great mayor make a great President?

M|11.14.07 @ 9:51PM|#

This man must not become our next president, no way, no how, under any circumstances.

No there's a seditious, and soon-to-be actionable, sentiment!

/snark

BakedPenguin|11.14.07 @ 10:51PM|#

...there is a little part of me that still sort of likes him. ...Not enough for me to actually vote for him, but just a bit.

There's a part of me that likes him, too. Not enough for me to vote for him, but enough to brake if he were ever to step in front of my car.

Of course, I like my car, too.

BakedPenguin|11.14.07 @ 11:29PM|#

Argh. That should have been "...I like my car, too, which is a good reason to brake."

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|11.14.07 @ 11:31PM|#

I want to post this Giuliani quote ("Freedom is...") on my Facebook page (I know, I'm a lame-o; I'm on Facebook), but I'm worried that people wouldn't understand that it was meant ironically.

It would be up there with such greats as:

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

- Mel Brooks

"People should not be afraid of their government; governments should be afraid of their people"

-Alan Moore

and the all-time classic:

"There is a fine line between fiction and nonfiction, and I believe Jimmy Buffett and I snorted it in 1976."

-Kinky Friedman

(Thank you Reason, for introducing me to the last one!)

Kolohe|11.15.07 @ 12:29AM|#

Benito Mussolini in a coat and tie.

oncogenesis|11.15.07 @ 2:35AM|#

No, Kolohe. Grandpa Munster channeling Benito Mussolini.

|11.15.07 @ 7:49AM|#

Benito Mussolini in a coat and tie.

Given Rudy's well-known penchant for drag, could we be looking at an election where both our candidates are "Hugo Chavez in a pantsuit"?

Broomstick Hilda|11.15.07 @ 9:38AM|#

I mean basic things like the ability to walk down a street at night with a reasonable assumption that you will NOT be mugged, harrassed, swindled etc.).

Things didn't change one bit. The mugging, hassling, and swindling was just done by the police instead of private citizens.

Episiarch|11.15.07 @ 9:50AM|#

Why would anyone vote for either Hillary or Rudy? Their differences are miniscule (unless you are a party partisan who wants your particular authoritarian in charge), and voting for one over the other is a tacit endorsement of that person. Better to not vote at all and hope the turnout is so low that it sends a message.

|11.15.07 @ 9:53AM|#

Heres pretty much where I stand-

Hillary Vs Rudy, I vote for the LP nutjob.

Hillary Vs Romney, I vote for Romney.

Hillary Vs Thompson, I vote for Thompson.

Hillary Vs McCain, again the LP nutjob.

AWIK DUNDER(head)OOOOO|11.15.07 @ 10:26AM|#

"Why would anyone vote for either Hillary or Rudy? Their differences are miniscule"

WHY YOU SISSY FAKE LIBERTARIAN CRAP ... MAN. GHOULIANI STANDS FOR STANDING UP AGAINST THE STANCES OF ISLAMOFACISM. 9/11 9/11 9/11. HILLARY SITS AND TAKES IT.

RUDY IS A TROO LIBERTARIAN. YOU ARE NOT. AND THAT MEANS YOU ARE... YOU ARE... YOU ARE....

A SILLY ASS FACE!!!!!!!

SO THERE.

crw|11.15.07 @ 12:30PM|#

Actually, in Hillary vs. Rudy, I'd hold my nose and vote Rudy. I'd rather have a power mad douche and divided government than a power mad douche and single party rule. Remember, a vote for Shrillary is a vote for letting the Dems do any damn thing they please.

|11.15.07 @ 2:13PM|#

Actually, in Hillary vs. Rudy, I'd hold my nose and vote Rudy. I'd rather have a power mad douche and divided government than a power mad douche and single party rule.

That's a pretty important thing to consider. Of course, there's always the expatriate option.

|11.17.07 @ 12:55AM|#

Rudy, whatever his faults, it as close to perfect a Republican candidate as we are ever likely to get. He is strong on national defense, tough on welfare, tough on crime, and liberal in the classical sense on economic matters. He's moderate on social issues and conservative on everything else. So are the majority of the American people.

Not only that he's a proven leader. He took New York, a crime-ridden socialist basket case and made it again into the world capital it once was. His leadership after 9-11 was magnificent.

Libertarians and conservatives should unite behind the best hope for defeating the socialist-Islamo-fascist coalition that dominates the Democratic Party today.

|11.17.07 @ 8:05AM|#

The impracticality of some many libertarians never ceases to amaze me. Guliani is certainly no prize from our perspective, but he is surely better than any of the statist Democrat alternatives. Faced with the poor choice of Guliani vs. any leftist Democrat, the rational libertarian should support the lesser of two evils. One party rule by statist Democrats for even four years could put this country on a long term collectivist path that would take decades at best to reverse.

McKinley|11.25.07 @ 3:10PM|#

"Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority." Followed shortly by "...how to stretch the laws like a trapeze net, catching criminals and nuisances who had thought themselves invulnerable." then followed by "The mayor directed the Metropolitan Transit Authority to strip the ads." obviosly a complete contempt for law other then his own. Hillary vs. Rudy: Nanny state vs. Police state.