The combative former mayor of New York has shown he is resolute in a crisis but also creates turmoil himself.
In three campaigns for mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani lost a squeaker, won a squeaker and won by a landslide. What's more, he did it as a Republican in a city where Democratic voters have a 5-to-1 majority. Now, he's in a position that no New York mayor has ever been in: national front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
"On the face of it, a New York Catholic, thrice-married person who's just a mayor with liberal credentials on immigration, gay rights and abortion would not seem to be a likely leader among Republican and Republican-leaning voters in the United States," said John Mollenkopf, a political scientist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. "And yet, that's where he is."
Giuliani's success has come from persuading voters that he is tough and competent. As evidence, he can point to the sharp decline in crime in New York: In 1993, the year he was first elected, there were 1,946 murders in the city; in 1998, the year after he won his second term, there were 633.
However, his primary achievement to national voters has been his handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. His appearances on television that day showed him both managing the catastrophe and reassuring a frightened and grieving city and nation.
Though New York City as a whole benefited from lower crime rates and an improved economy driven by Wall Street, Giuliani's combative style led to high-profile disputes. He threatened to cut off funding in 1999 to the Brooklyn Museum after it displayed artwork he deemed offensive, and in 1995, he threw Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat out of a symphony performance at Lincoln Center.
Both controversies were actually politically savvy, said Fran Reiter, who was a deputy mayor for Giuliani but supports Hillary Clinton. The Brooklyn Museum fight occurred when Giuliani was in his final term as mayor and the year before his aborted run for a Senate seat. "He had to have some Republican bona fides, and he didn't have them," Reiter said. "Was that politically astute? Sure. He was never going to run in New York City again."
As mayor, Giuliani, 63, had limited success with the state Legislature and the governor, especially after he endorsed incumbent Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, in 1994 over the eventual winner, Republican George Pataki. Giuliani wasn't able to prevent the city from losing a commuter tax when it became a political pawn in a state legislative election. Nor could he persuade the Legislature to give him control over the city's struggling school system. His successor, Michael Bloomberg, won control of schools in 2002, shortly after arriving in the mayor's office.
As a presidential candidate, Giuliani is trying to balance his strong credentials on law and order with his more liberal record on social issues such as abortion, gun control, gay rights and immigration. He must also capitalize on the fame he gained on 9/11 without appearing to exploit it. On the stump, he has begun stressing his executive-branch experience and emphasizing his record in New York of reducing crime and welfare rolls, and innovating a statistically based approach to policing.
As mayor, Giuliani was known for being blunt to the point of rudeness. He didn't hesitate to tell constituents they were wrong, in need of psychological help, or simply a "jerk," as he told one caller to his weekly radio program.
But what the nation saw on Sept. 11 was Giuliani finding the right words and demeanor to articulate the grief and shock felt by New York City and the nation as people watched terrorist attacks kill thousands on live TV.
The number of dead "will be more than we can bear," he said at the time. "We've suffered terrible losses, and we will grieve for them, but we will be here, tomorrow and forever."
Giuliani encouraged calm and tolerance after the attacks - just as he had done in previous crises, said Fred Siegel, a Giuliani biographer. He points to 1994, when a Hasidic teenager riding in a van on the Brooklyn Bridge was killed by a Lebanese cab driver in apparent retaliation for the deaths of Muslims in Israel, and 1997, when a Palestinian man went on a shooting spree atop the Empire State Building, killing a Danish tourist. Giuliani "played those very well: 'Be calm, don't make too much of this,' " Siegel said.
But often Giuliani could be incendiary: When an unarmed off-duty security guard was killed by police, Giuliani leaked the victim's confidential juvenile record, which was minimal, and said he was no "altar boy." (In fact, the victim had been, his mother told a local cable channel.)
"He was reassuring in a moment of crisis, and I think that's fair. I'm not going to take that away from him," said Ester Fuchs, a Columbia University political scientist who generally is critical of Giuliani. But, she said, "he has a tendency to pour fuel on the fire when it serves his political agenda."
Giuliani has outlined "12 commitments" to voters that include Republican perennials such as cutting taxes and "wasteful Washington spending" and appointing "strict constructionist" judges.
But Giuliani's main plank is his law-and-order vision, turned toward what he calls "the terrorists' war on us."
"His biggest appeal at the base of the electorate is that he's going to be relentlessly tough on what people think is the major threat to our way of life," political scientist John Mollenkopf said. "If Rudy Giuliani had been president and the goal was to get (Osama) bin Laden, I think he would have done it. People see that and it appeals to them."
Giuliani has not provided details on how he would achieve many of his goals. As mayor of New York, Giuliani was a champion of cracking down on minor infractions because letting them slide might create an atmosphere in which major crime flourished. On social issues, he is to the left of the national Republican Party and supports gun control and abortion rights.
But Giuliani's shifting on gun control (which he says should be left to the states) and on immigration (he stresses the need for secure borders instead of immigration's benefits) has left even some of his supporters confused about his political philosophy.
"I don't know what his core beliefs are because he's shed most of them," said Doug Muzzio, a public affairs professor at Baruch College in New York.
Giuliani relies on a tight-knit core of loyal advisers. Within the inner circle, "there was ample opportunity for debate," recalls Fran Reiter, former deputy mayor during Giuliani's first term. "He wanted to know all sides of something before making a decision. He particularly appreciated people who, even if they had their own agenda, would say so."
Once a decision was made, however, everyone had to get on board. "Rudy Giuliani takes on unbelievably hard fights, and he sticks with them and he stands by you," Reiter said.
However, Giuliani's premium on loyalty has led to embarrassment. He gave a top administration job to Russell Harding, son of the head of the Liberal Party, which was instrumental in his election. Harding ended up in jail for corruption and possession of child pornography.
Giuliani promoted his former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, as a candidate for secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security. Kerik turned out to have a slew of confirmation-killing problems - from failing to pay his nanny tax to using as a love nest an apartment near ground zero intended as a respite spot for workers at the site. Kerik was indicted Nov. 9 on charges of federal tax fraud.
Giuliani said on CNBC on Nov. 29 "it was a mistake" that he did not thoroughly vet Kerik. "I acknowledged the fact that I should have checked him out more than I did," he said.
Giuliani decided to locate the city's emergency operations center, opened in 1997, in the World Trade Center complex, which had been bombed by terrorists in 1993. During 9/11, the "bunker" could not be used to respond to the terrorist attack; the World Trade Center was evacuated, burned and collapsed that day.
Giuliani is credited with taming a city considered ungovernable. He stressed accountability and measurable results, most notably with CompStat, the statistics-based approach to policing that was introduced during his administration.
In his presidential campaign, he has proposed similar systems to measure progress in Iraq, security at the nation's borders and ports, and other programs. He championed the "broken windows" approach to civic order: cracking down on small infractions to avoid a sense of lawlessness. After he left office, he summed up his management style in his book "Leadership."
"He brought a sense that government had to be coherent, the parts of government had to work together. You had to have coordination, accountability and measurement," biographer Fred Siegel said. "It sounds like kindergarten, but none of those things had been there before."
Giuliani is a policy wonk on subjects that interest him.
"He studies things. He's not someone who goes on instincts," Siegel said. "He's much more disciplined than (Bill) Clinton. Part of the fun of being around Clinton was the casualness, the sheer fun of it. Nobody feels that way around Giuliani - it's much more business."
Michael Bloomberg, Giuliani's successor in New York, has continued the focus on statistical measurement, and the success in keeping crime down, though with a very different personal style than Giuliani.
