America's Favorite Mayor As President?

oo

Rudy Giuliani has filed papers with the Federal Election commission to form an exploratory committee in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Funny, it seems as though he has been campaigning since 9/11. I once read that as a college kid he confided his presidential dream to his girlfriend and practiced future campaign speeches in front of her at home. The country, especially Republicans of course, are in love with him. Most New Yorkers don't have the same warm and fuzzy feelings for him. Here are just some troubling examples of his stint of Mayor:
The crime rate in the city went down dramatically on Giuliani's watch. That was his top career issue—first as Manhattan federal prosecutor and then as mayor. Crime was declining in the rest of the country as well but not as sharply as in New York. Always the showman, Giuliani took full credit for the drop in the media. Some of the credit should have gone to his first police commissioner, William Bratton, whom Giuliani fired when Bratton began receiving some credit in the press. Rudy's policy of ‘zero tolerance’ (tough penalties for minor offences) was criticised as racist and as concentrating on the visibility of the problem, rather than helping its victims.
His other signature policy was the drastic reduction of the city’s welfare rolls. However, he provided few jobs and little opportunity for job training for those he kicked out of the system. He instituted the biggest Workfare ( work for benefits) program in America, but it did little to move people into full employment. Giuliani's tough stand on welfare drastically increased the number of homeless people, whole families in particular. Soup kitchens and charity food pantries were overwhelmed.
Giuliani was one of the most divisive mayors of our multi-cultural city. He managed to alienate the city’s Black and Hispanic community with demeaning tactics. His cabinet only had a sprinkling of minorities in any positions of importance. He regularly refused to meet with senior elected black officials. In other words, he ignored a huge part of New York City's population.
Rudy was not this city's favorite mayor during his years in office. He was on his way out when 9/11 happened. All of a sudden, he became America's mayor. In just a few days he was elevated to television hero, crisis-manager and Consoler-in-Chief. Time Magazine made him the 2001 Man Of The Year. But really, how much better did he have to act during the nation's worst crisis than President Bush to receive such accolades.
So while most of America has been going gaga over Giuliani, New Yorkers are much more reserved in their judgment of him. And remember, a politician's past behavior is always an indicator of his future behavior.

Here is a related Village Voice article:
May 9, 2006 by Michael Atkinson
It's the Reagan paradigm in a teapot: Terrorize the citizenry with harmless bogeymen (the homeless, welfare moms, artists), claim credit for social change you did not create (crime was on a three-year decline before he took office, and dipped in most cities, regardless of policy), foster the illusion of order and control (where did the homeless go?), shout bootstrap ballyhoo about freeloaders (the "workfare" program was on its face a form of indentured servitude), and ignore all evidence to the contrary, civil rights, real poverty, and the First Amendment. Most of all, use publicity to lie so relentlessly that the populace and the media take the fiction of success (nearly all of Giuliani's triumphant stats were bloated, skewed, or untrue) as their starting point.
After 9-11, a sick, scandalized lame-duck mayor became a national hero for simply keeping his composure on TV. Keating's film is a comet out of the past, but it's focused, if only circumstantially, on the future. Faithful Republican thug, Giuliani may be our destiny in national politics—a man who's capable of boasting (during the last GOP convention) that upon seeing a body falling from the twin towers he turned to Bernard Kerik and said, "Thank God George Bush is our president!"