Grand Illusion
Rudy Giuliani is slipping, if not quite sliding away. In early polls he led Hillary Clinton and every Democrat and was pulling away from the Republican pack, having benefited much from John McCain's gracious decision to set himself on fire.
Back then the smart money--and it's a wonder they still call it that-- fretted that Hillary was 'unelectable'. Today she beats Rudy in every poll. Among Republicans he's again in a dead heat, this time with B-list TV celebrity Fred Thompson.
A poll's a sometime thing; as in college sports, it's rare in politics to debut at number one and stay there all season. But there's a darker cloud on Rudy's horizon than just some poll-- his record.
Our politics is such that we know more about Rudy's personal foibles than his performance in office: He's on his third marriage. He cut his second wife loose in a press conference. His children favor other candidates. Every other day it seems he blurts out something strange.
Rudy claimed he spent more time at Ground Zero than the rescue workers, prompting Salon's Alex Koppelman to tally up: 29 hours in 90 days, far less than the workers and, half the time he spent coming and going to Yankee games.
He told London reporters he was one of the "four or five most famous Americans in the world." It's a good thing he wasn't in Paris; he might have said he was Napoleon.
As mayor, Rudy was always popping off. When the mother of a Latino shot by police while lying on the ground called into his radio show, he talked over her, misstating key facts and blaming the victim's death on his upbringing.
Rudy hopes we'll accept his nutty truculence as the price you pay for a guy who can handle the terrorists. After 8 years of Bush's chronic distemper voters may go for the nice guy or gal, in which case he's toast. He needs an electorate fixated on terrorism so he can sell himself as sheriff.
The worst thing that could befall Rudy would be if every voter went out and bought a copy of Grand Illusion by veteran New York journalists Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins. The book is a meticulous deconstruction of Rudy's performance on his signature issue before, during and after 9/11.
Grand Illusion exposes Rudy's alleged core competency regarding terrorism as a fraud. It also mercilessly depicts the cronyism, poor judgment and cash and carry politics that were the hallmarks of his years as mayor. The book is no partisan screed, its authors being content to let the facts make their case. Some examples:
On 9/11, the heads of his police and fire departments were Bernie Kerik and Tom Von Essen. Kerik had been Rudy's driver; Von Essen a friendly union official. Between them they'd taken entry level management exams three times and failed each one.
The Office of Emergency Management was headed by another Rudy loyalist, Richard Sheirer. Sheirer spent most of his career as a fire alarm dispatcher. Along came Rudy. He was soon a senior manager in the fire department and ultimately top dog at OEM.
Rudy and his three musketeers spent 9/11 walking north from Ground Zero, searching for a command center. Over the objections of the city's public safety professionals, and prodded by Republican influence peddlers, they had put the city's emergency command center at the Twin Towers, a site deemed one of the likeliest targets of terrorist attack.
So on 9/11, Rudy and company had nowhere to go. Worse, they had no one to talk to. It had taken them two terms to select a new communication system to replace the city's 1960s vintage two-way radios. When they finally did, it was in a no bid contract with a politically wired supplier who sold them untested equipment.
The equipment never worked. On 9/11, all the firefighters had were radios the city had called "obsolete" and "totally inadequate" 11 years earlier. Rudy would later tell spellbound audiences that fireman in the towers ignored orders to evacuate. In fact they never received them.
Barrett and Collins found not one instance of Giuliani, Kerik, Von Essen or Sheirer issuing orders to anyone that day. But as Bush flew about the country, Rudy walked in plain sight and spoke defiantly. On those words and pictures his campaign rests.
Amazing as it may be, Barrett and Collins show that prior to 9/11 Rudy's interest in terrorism was virtually nil. It makes sense. How else do you end up facing catastrophe with no command structure, no command center and no communications system?
Rudy conflates terrorism with domestic crime, using his image on crime to burnish his image on terrorism. But the former is mostly smoke and mirrors. In New York City crime began to fall under Giuliani's predecessor David Dinkins. All over America crime fell throughout the nineties. The biggest drop came in the category regarded as least tractable: serious, violent, urban crime.
Demographics, economics and public policy all played a part. At a national level, Bill Clinton banned assault weapons, put 100,000 cops on the streets and used RICO laws to put away urban gang leaders. Rudy contributed, but his specialties were inflaming racial divisions after public emergencies and, of course, taking credit.
After 9/11 Rudy made a fortune billing corporations and government for "security consulting." His new company was little more than a turkey farm for Sheirer, Kerik and other hacks from his city hall days. Apart from some lobbying and PR strategy, what they sold was the chance to be identified with Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, hero of 9/11.
Republicans desperately need new wedge issues to perpetuate their strategy of divide and conquer. Gay bashing is turning off younger voters. They've won as much of the abortion fight as they can afford to. Stem cells and creationism make them look like idiots.
In the nick of time they discover "Islamo-fascism" and just the candidate to sell it. It's a stark message: our safety lies not in vigilance or reason or rule of law or diplomacy or conservation but rather in an armed struggle so endless as to make the cold war seem like a matinée. Forget about corruption or lost liberties; they've made us an offer we can't refuse.
Hollow tough talk, ignorant ideologues, incompetence, cronyism, poorly equipped men and women putting their lives on the line-- sound like any president you know? Here's hoping Rudy falls early. It's too painful to imagine one grand illusion following another.
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I lived in Harrisburg, PA for a while and used to volunteer at a soup kitchen. Curiously, most of the homeless and about-to-be-homeless folks there were refugees from Giuliani's New York City.
Rudy is just a thug and I'm amazed that the media take him seriously. Worse though is the fact that we have only a couple of candidates even worthy of consideration for the Presidency -- on either side. This crop lacks experience and integrity, and reeks of big-money interests. I'm working for the white-haired guy with a mortgage.
GuiltyByStander
DEMS are good enuf, exception possibly of MIKE GRAVEL, who exposes hypocrisy and corrupt DC to a T turns around and say something nutty.
KUCINICH is qualified as a CONGRESSMAN and CLEVELAND MAYOR. KUCINICH never has to backdown, violate his consistency. A genuine progressive democrat not bought and sold by CORPORATE or LOBBY. He has the stature too, believe that looking at him? No maybe but heart, soul and mind he provides for the common people's diversity. A true visionary if you read his mayor and HOUSE resolution and vote record.
OBAMA the conciliator can advocate all of us getting along in coalition to solve our problems, all be at the table and negotiate together, okay. But KUCINICH isn't running a HILLARY like grand illusion campaign either.
RICHARDSON is especially qualified. Populist. Reasonable. Wiss even except his choice choice or not when you are gay. But out of IRAQ now! Proven governance Governor of New Mexico eh. CHRISTOPHER DODD. Decent. 24 years experience eh. Sort of conservative progressive isn't he? How about HILLARY? Next to last choice since I fell in love the way she worked the first debates. But in time seeing her for what she is. Decent enuf sort once you get by her Macbethian ambition and centrist shenanigan Republican positions. And bought and sold to CORPORATE. And WAR within her scope.
BIDEN, the aftermath of somebody elses vision, getting on bandwagons a hair or two or three late. Sort of a blowhard to me.
The DEMOCRATS have got many capable, well qualified, if not altogether decent at least they are democrats riding the democrat platform which is first the people unlike the GOP who advances the causes of business and now arguably Church first. Any democrat, every single one, is a %100 better that any Republican, aside maybe the libertarian, Ron Paul. By a 100% I mean, then we start, zero level, to prove DEMS are even 10% better. But that is a hundred percent improvement right there.
Vote for Rudy and the Terrorists Win. They have learned that Rudy will never be able to safe guard America. He will always be A Day Late and Dollar Short, (even though he had the funding and the time).
Fred Thompson's made it to the B-list?
All snark aside (well, some, anyway), Rudy Giuliani's single talent is getting himself headlines. The most dangerous place in the world to stand is between Giuliani and a TV camera.
Pity he has no idea what to do once that camera begins to roll. And I dread what would happen under a Giuliani administration if we were attacked - we'd be longing for the good old Bush days, I suspect. Not to mention he'd likely start (and somehow manage to lose) a war with Canada...
Not somehow! He'd lose the same way that bushco(tm) would lose the same war. By spending hundreds of billions of dollars on stuff othre than the military, and then complain that the nation wasn't supporting the troops...
When the Old Guard hacks running most state party machines all jumped on the BLANDwagon in favor of moving their primary dates forward just to lock in a "CANNED-idate", that should have been a tip-off to us all that the fix was in.
We have about three months left to REALLY listen to what the field has to say. After that, we're toast! Thank heavens for "the Inter Nets"! The MSM is all partisan wind!@~
Luckily, Rudy's inflated ego and QUESTIONABLE BUSINESS CONNECTIONS will probably put him out of the race long before the primaries.
Then again...didn't seem to impede the Bonzo juggernaut back in 2000, did it? Think!!!!
Electing Rudy as President would be like depending on BUSH or CHENY to fight beside you in a war.
RUDY WILL OUTSOURCE THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION and smile a lot pretending he is President JUST LIKE BUSH DOES.
Great article Mr. Curry and very accurate. While Guiliani is a farce, I do want to address the bigger picture though: the Media IS King!
They put him on a pedestal and are now revealing "facts" which they knew all along. They helped spin the White House's sales efforts on Iraq and 73% Americans were for it in March 2003. Once the media starting covering the 'real war' and the real reasons for going into war, the same percentage of people are against the war!
But a majority of this media still fawns over Bush and finds any excuse to bash the Dems?!? The internet and blogs are taking over but unless the media starts telling the truth, most people live in a bubble!
It was a Guiliani "bubble" that has now burst!
It would be great to have a president that openly made out with his wife before every speech though. Guiliani is toast. He is Bush lite only more cunning. If this country elects this moron I am going to complete that bomb shelter I started in the '60's. Americans aren't that dumb are they? Look what they have done lately.....nevermind.
Let's also not forget that Kerik had mafia ties and Rudy knew this too when he proposed him for head of Homeland Security. Let's also not forget that he was having a very public affair with his current wife before his last wife found out about it. Both of his children are estranged from him. We also should not let him claim he was the one who lowered crime in NYC either since during his tenure as mayor crime went down across the board in most all major cities because of other reasons that had more to do with demographics and economics.
Rudy was created by the media as a larger than life persona because he just happened to be mayor during 9/11. Let's hope the media will do as good of a job exposing his other side as they did creating his myth.
RJ Crane, editor
topplebush.com
The difference was, that Bozo had the machine to lose documents, make facts fuzzy, raise enough doubt and confusion to soothe voters and Karl Rove and his henchmen to knock off legitimate debate. The facts about mismanagement and cronyism are pretty hard to hide for Mr. Rudy.
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