Giuliani's untold stories

In the long trek to November 2008, there will be time for lots of surprises. The first big surprise is the current Republican frontrunner: Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani leads John McCain by 11 points in the latest NBC poll of Republican voters. The party of Sunbelt Baptists is embracing an Italian from New York. The party theocratic conservatives is enthralled by a social liberal with three wives. Do they really know this guy?

They have to have heard about his liberal positions. Giuliani is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights. Now he says he's pro-choice but he'll appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade. Mitt Romney is taking heat for his Potomac fever conversions, but Giuliani seems to be getting away with it.

But how does he get away with the cross-dressing thing? Go to YouTube.com, if you're inclined to Internet surfing, and search for "Rudy in drag." You'll find several versions of the mayor, dressed in lavender and pink, blonde wig and makeup, hamming it up for the New York press corps. In one clip he's being smooched by Donald Trump.

I'm more open-minded than most, but even I find it creepy that our would-be president seems to enjoy camping it up like J. Edgar Hoover on a Saturday night. I don't buy into media conspiracy theories, but I wonder why that clip hasn't made repeat showings on network TV like Bill hugging Monica on the rope-line, or George Allen's macaca moment. It hasn't, at least not yet. Is that why Republicans think Rudy's their kind of guy?

Republicans credit Giuliani with cleaning up the streets of New York, but there's an untold story there as well.

Yes, crime in New York dropped in the 1990s, and Giuliani and his police commissioner, Bill Bratton, were glad to claim the credit. But, as Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explain in their best-selling Freakonomics, crime went down dramatically in every American city in the 1990s. And in New York, crime started falling several years before Giuliani was elected, in large part because his predecessor, David Dinkins, hired hundreds of new police officers.

That story leads to another large, unexplored part of Rudy Giuliani: his ego. After Bratton, no slouch himself when it comes to ego, made the cover of Time magazine, Giuliani fired him. More troubling was Giuliani's effort to postpone the New York mayoral election two months after the attacks of 9/11. A traumatized city couldn't go on without him, he said. To which the traumatized city replied, "oh yes we can."

Giuliani has been riding 9/11 ever since, turning his heroic moment first into a lucrative stint in the private sector, then into a presidential bid. But all the ink spent examining that day's events, and all the finger-pointing in Washington, somehow left Giuliani untouched. Giuliani looked so dramatic fleeing from the World Trade Center, as comedian Bill Maher has pointed out, because he made the bone-headed decision to locate the city's emergency command center in New York's highest profile terrorist target.

Equally disturbing - and equally unreported - is Giuliani's failure before 9/11 to put New York's police and fire department on a coordinated radio system. The pre-9/11 failures of the FBI and CIA have been extensively investigated, but Giuliani has gotten a free ride.

Why? Mostly because in our moment of fear and doubt, the nation needed a hero. While the president was hiding on Air Force One, Giuliani was on TV looking calm and brave. George W. Bush showed up a few days later, struck a heroic pose at Ground Zero and rode that image to war and re-election.

Giuliani's trying to do the same thing, but the betting here is it won't work. The trauma of 9/11 was more acute the closer you were to Manhattan and the Pentagon. Over distance and time, that wound has healed. Fear of terrorism stopped working for Bush months ago.

A long campaign leaves time for many surprises, but I won't be surprised if voters decide they don't need another president whose main claim to leadership is that he struck a heroic pose at Ground Zero.

O.K., so maybe the country ithnt ready for a woman for president, but how bout at leatht a croth drether? OMG, come on, cut me a little thlack!-

Julie-Yawnee

I can’t support Guiliani for President because of his social liberalism, which is noted in passing in this article.

That said, there are way too many cheap shots, misrepresentations, and more than a hint of bigotry in this piece.

Its counterproductive politically. Guiliani’s track record speaks for itself, and will be his undoing before the nomination process is completed. After that happens, he’s going to be useful as a fundraiser and leading voice on the war against the Islamofacists. He also would be a good choice for a Cabinet position in a future GOP administration.

Just my opinion.

“The theory: Unwanted children are more likely to become troubled adolescents, prone to crime and drug use, than are wanted children. When abortion was legalized in the 1970s, a whole generation of unwanted births were averted, leading to a drop in crime nearly two decades later when this phantom generation would have come of age.” This is what is written in Freakonomics. How can anyone take this seriously? And David Dinkins helped cut crime? LMAO!!!

I just had to comment on those. Other than that, I think it’s an “emotional” thing with Rudy. He was “America’s Mayor” during our darkest hour and people will support him no matter what. Unfortunately, I cannot support anyone who advocates gun control. Just my two cents worth!

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