Giuliani: Flawed or Flawless?: The Oral Biography

by Deborah Hart Strober, Gerald S. Strober

Overview

As he took charge of his city’s response to the 9/11 attacks, New York City's mayor Rudy Giuliani became the most admired man in America, and perhaps the world. Featuring interviews with longtime political associates, teachers, protégées, and friends, as well as his opponents, critics, and other astute political observers, Giuliani presents a living portrait of one of the most prominent and controversial politicians of our era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620459638
Publisher:	Trade Paper Press
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober are the authors of His Holiness the Dalai Lama: The Oral Biography and Billy Graham: An Oral and Narrative Biography, both available from Wiley, and four previous oral histories, including Let Us Begin Anew: An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency and Reagan: The Man and His Presidency. They are longtime residents of New York City.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.

The Interviewees.

PART I: THE SOFTER, GENTLER RUDY GIULIANI.

1 The Mayor’s Poignant Last State of the City Address.

2 Who Is Rudy Giuliani?

PART II: BEGINNINGS: BROOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND.

3 A Yankee Fan in “God’s Kingdom”: Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School.

PART III: CRIME BUSTER.

4 From Street-Smart Rudy in the Ivy League Southern District of New York (SDNY) to Number Three in the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney for the SDNY: A Smaller Pond in the Swim to City Hall?

5 Prosecutorial Hits and Misses.

PART IV: THE POLITICAL AGENDA.

6 Act One: Rudy the Loser.

7 Act Two, Scene One: Rudy the Winner.

PART V: THE FIRST TERM: JANUARY 2, 1994–DECEMBER 31, 1997.

8 Getting the Giuliani Administration Up and Running.

9 Administrative Style.

10 Hizzoner the Mayor: Saint Rudy or Mussolini on the Hudson?

11 The Mayor and the NYPD.

PART VI: THREE TRAGIC INCIDENTS: THE ISSUE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE BY THE NYPD.

12 Louima.

13 Diallo.

14 Dorismond.

PART VII: THE SECOND TERM: JANUARY 1, 1998–DECEMBER 31, 2001.

15 Act Two, Scene Two: Rudy the Winner.

PART VIII: SEPTEMBER 11.

16 Heroism, Grief, and Decision.

17 Wednesday-Morning Quarterbacking.

18 The Aftermath.

PART IX: LIFE AFTER CITY HALL.

19 Giuliani Partners, or Rudy the Very, Very, Very Rich Man.

20 Gazing into the Crystal Ball: The Presidency in Rudy’s Future.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

* RUDY Giuliani has gone from being America's mayor to our top political paradox. How could a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, twice-divorced centrist lead the early polling in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries?
Conventional wisdom says that social conservatives who dominate the GOP primary process just don't know Rudy's record. Once they see that the emperor has no clothes - or, rather, likes to wear women's clothes - his numbers will slip and his prospects will sink.
That line, repeated by Democrats across New York, may prove to be true. But don't be so quick to write off Rudy. Deconstruct that conventional wisdom, and you find that it rests on shaky premises, knee-jerk biases—and, perhaps most importantly, a fundamental misunderstanding of the post-9/11 political climate.
Of course, Giuliani's had a rough week or two; even if he's still the front-runner, he's hardly a sure thing for the nomination. He raised an impressive $10 million in March alone, but keep in mind that his high standing in the polls has a lot to do with the relative weakness of the current field, which could change.
That said, I suspect the "Rudy can't win" mantra is being driven as much by Democratic fear and loathing - of both conservatives and Giuliani himself - as by Republican politics and performance.
As Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald Strober's "Flawed or Flawless" amply documents through dozens of interviews with friends and foes alike, liberals widely despise Giuliani. Not just because they see him as a racially insensitive, rights-suppressing bully, but because he succeeded in this big blue city largely because of his hard-charging style, not despite it.
To these liberals, Giuliani winning the GOP nomination is doubly scary: He threatens their worldview - and, worse, as a socially tolerant 9/11 hero, he's probably the biggest threat to beat the Democratic nominee. So when they say he can't win, part of what they're really saying is they don't want him to win.
More important, though, is how the left sees the right. The way many of my Democratic friends view evangelicals, and conservatives more broadly, is best summed up by the infamous Washington Post mischaracterization—"poor, uneducated and easy to command." So in their eyes, what's wrong with Kansas will prove to be what's wrong with Rudy's campaign.
That glib analysis is flawed, though. It treats movement conservatives as an unthinking monolith and wrongly presumes they would never tolerate or nominate a moderate.
Democrats also ignore the conservative appeal of Giuliani's strong moral streak, which he memorably demonstrated in his 1999 confrontation over the Brooklyn Museum's controversial "Sensation" exhibit. That's probably not enough to compensate for his apostasies on abortion and gay rights, but at a minimum it'll help him connect with some less-doctrinaire primary voters and likely mollify others' concerns about his cultural profile.
But liberals' big error here is to dramatically discount the long-term political impact of 9/11. They just don't see how the terrorist attacks of that day, and the ongoing threat of jihadism, have transformed millions of Americans (especially on the right) into security-first voters. This is the pre-eminent, transcendent issue for this generation of conservatives, and Rudy's credentials are saint-like.
Remember, conservatives willingly overlooked Ronald Reagan's divorce at a time when divorce was a much bigger political taboo than it is today. To righties of that generation, fighting Communism was the preeminent, transcendent cause, and Reagan was peerless when it came to waging and winning the Cold War. (It didn't hurt that he was a tax-cutting zealot, too.)
One of Giuliani's considerable advantages, much like Reagan, is the president he would replace. Many voters saw Reagan's strength and clarity as welcome antidotes to Jimmy Carter's weakness and malaise. To today's Republicans, Giulia

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