Rudy Giuliani wasn’t always seen as a buffoon. There was a time when he got it right
Rudy Giuliani has become so politically toxic that Ken Jeong, one of the judges on Fox’s “The Masked Singer,” stalked off at the end of the show recently when it was revealed that the singer costumed as a jack-in-thebox was none other than Giuliani, arguably the jackass in the box.
However, any fair assessment of Giuliani’s entire career will confirm that, before he disgraced himself while serving as President Trump’s personal attorney, he did some good things as mayor of New York City (19942001) and, before that, as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Moreover, some of his actions are relevant to solving problems that many of America’s big cities currently are facing as they try to cope with violent crime and other signs of lawlessness.
Granted, crime fighting aside, from his years as the Big Apple’s mayor, Giuliani is still better known nationally for his leadership following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Soon thereafter, he was being dubbed “America’s mayor,” and the adulation stoked the ego of a man who is not exactly known for his modesty.
By 2004, Giuliani was still basking in the glory of being hailed as America’s mayor, but running for president at that time was off the table because incumbent Republican George W. Bush — who had squeaked through to a narrow victory in 2000 — was seeking re-election.
So Giuliani turned his attention to 2008. His initial poll numbers were promising, but he made a major miscalculation, pinning his hopes on winning Florida’s GOP presidential primary. He apparently believed that most of the former New Yorkers who had moved to Florida were yearning to vote for him and would tell their friends and neighbors to do so as well.
Wrong. In the primary’s nine-man field, Giuliani finished a distant third, with only 14.7% of the vote — just ahead of Mike Huckabee’s 13.5% and well behind the winner John McCain (36%) and runner-up Mitt Romney (31%.)
After that rebuff, Giuliani had largely faded into the background of national politics and concentrated on tending to his business interests, until Trump came along. Largely overlooked was what he had accomplished as Gotham’s mayor by taking a tough stance on crime.
Giuliani and his police commissioner, William Bratton, subscribed to the so-called “broken window theory,” which basically argues that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder create an environment that encourages additional crime and disorder, including more serious crimes.
In Giuliani’s New York, seemingly small steps such as cleaning up graffiti and cracking down on prostitutes, loiterers, pickpockets, purse snatchers, drug dealers and aggressive panhandlers were followed by a steep decline in serious crimes — homicides, assaults, armed robberies.
Granted, other factors such as demographic shifts contributed to the decline, which nonetheless left New York boasting that it had become America’s safest large city. And granted, there also were credible complaints, especially from minorities, that they were too often singled out and hassled by cops using “stop and frisk” tactics.
On the other hand, Americans are now witnessing what happens when “minor” crimes, such as shoplifting, burglary, illegal possession of firearms, assaults, drug trafficking and even armed robberies are not prosecuted. To make matters worse, in some cities, “bail reform” has left the ordinary residents and businesses at the mercy of criminal gangs because jails seem to have a revolving door when turnthem-loose prosecutors refuse to, for instance, prosecute.
An illustrative example is there for all to see in
San Francisco, where recreational cannabis is legal, but retail theft has led Walgreen’s to close five of its Bay area stores and CVS to close six. So, for law-abiding residents, obtaining weed is easy, but, when they’re trying to refill their prescriptions, the city’s tolerance for blatant lawlessness provides a whole new definition of “drug problem.”