You people outside NY have no idea what it took to govern NYC in the early 90's. The place was a disaster and headed for the ultimate collapse. Comparing it to Rome in the final days would be completely unfair to Rome.
In addition, he had a complete dim council, a not all to cooperative state government and governor and a bunch of complete morons running the city. The fact that he got the squeegee guys off the street in his first week was a miracle.
Then he merged NY's three separate huge police forces, housing, transit and PD. The pols were trying to do this for 50 years. He got the internet integrated into city business. He kicked the mob out of the garbage bus and cut city garbage rates by over 80 percent. He kicked the mob out of the Fulton fish market. In a sign of defiance they burned the place down.
The list of his accomplishments is barely known by those inside NYC let alone outside NYC. Welfare roles were by cut over 60 percent. The list goes on and on. So you ideologues out there, stop worrying about things that no president is going to ever change and start thinking about how this country needs to be run.
I'm for his candidacy.
I second everything you say. Before Rudy, it was impossible to imagine that New York City could ever change. The city was run by time servers waiting to collect their pensions. The police did nothing but fill out paperwork -- and arrest the occasional citizen who tried to defend his own property. A slide into anarchy seemed inevitable. He changed everything.
My favorite Giuliani move had to do with welfare. Every time anyone tried to reform the welfare system the papers would be full of heartbreaking stories about how the cuts would result in the deaths of abused and neglected children. Giuliani announced that since child welfare was so important he was making it into a separate agency. Poof -- the big argument against cuts disappeared.
By the way, it was true that the child welfare agency was a mess. Workers had no computers available to them for one thing. They dictated their notes, then the tapes were sent to the typing pool which eventually got around to entering them in the computer system. Of course, since the computer records were always months out of date, no one ever referred to them. Giuliani started the process of bringing the system up to date.
The posted article is right about one thing. Giuliani is a "for me or against me" kind of guy. He sometimes alienates people who might otherwise support him. I'm waiting to see whether this will be a problem in his campaign. On the plus side, I think he has the ability to shape up agencies like the State Department and the CIA, kick a## with the opposition, and reverse our descent into an EU-style bureaucracy. That's why I consider him a conservative stealth candidate, even though he won't offer leadership on a number of issues conservatives care about. You can't do everything at once.