This may be moot now that the Crossdressin' Candidate has reaffirmed a women's right to choose. [Man, what was he smokin'?
] But for the curious...
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During every presidential campaign the hometown journalists and local politicians who best know their ex-local pols weigh in.
Arkansas Democrat editorial page editor Paul Greenberg, famous for coining the nickname "Slick Willie," warned America about Bill Clinton's estrangement from the truth when he ran in 1992. Molly Ivins warned in 2000 that the man she dubbed "Shrub" would "Texanise" the nation--and that that wouldn't be good. "Our kids don't have health insurance, our air is filthy and we rank near the bottom in practically every public thing they keep score in," she wrote of her home state.
Now it's my turn, as a New Yorker, to tell you the truth about Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani's 9/11 legacy isn't bravery--it's loudness. And stupidity.
The 343 members of the FDNY who died were the iconic heroes of the day. They too recall a less-than-Churchillian mayor. "If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out," said Sally Regenhard, mother of a fallen firefighter. "If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime--that's indisputable."
Firefighters say Giuliani ignored over a decade of requests for up-to-date radios to replace defective "handie talkies" that had failed during previous fires, including during the 1993 WTC bombing. When FDNY officials ordered firefighters to pull out on 9/11, firefighters didn't hear the "mayday" alert. He sparked more anger by calling off the search for bodies, which were scooped up with debris and dumped into a garbage landfill on Staten Island.
"He has alienated pretty much everybody in the 8,000-member fire department--by and large, we all resent him," Fire Captain Captain Michael Gala told Salon.
By the end of his term the mayor's relationship with New York had turned sour.
"Giuliani was a frustrated and not very popular mayor on September 10, 2001," Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wrote. "Today, most New Yorkers do see him as a hero, but also as a self-sabotaging, thin-skinned bully. To put it more bluntly, we know he's a bit of a dictator."
Like other dictators Giuliani thought his police could do no wrong. "Probably until the day I die, I will always give police officers the benefit of the doubt," he said after cops shot Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Bronx man, 41 times. "We also have a vicious form of anti-police bias which leads to entertaining every doubt possible against the police, and you know, police officers are human beings also." New York City settled his family's wrongful death lawsuit for $3 million.
"The police can't get an even break here," he complained after Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed security guard, was shot to death by an undercover policeman who had attempted to entrap him. (Dorismond's last words were his angry statement that he was a law-abiding citizen, not a drug deal.) In 2003 the city paid $2.25 million to the victim's family.
Most disturbing to Americans looking forward to the end of eight years of illegitimate rule by an unelected coup leader, Giuliani tried to exploit 9/11 to remain in power at least three extra months beyond the scheduled end of his term in January 2002. He even threatened to file a lawsuit to overturn the city's term limits law and run for reelection if the Democratic and Republican primary candidates refused to let him stay in power.
They called the wannabe dictator's bluff. So should we.
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20070403
