My Hat’s Off to Rudy
Tonight his presidential obituary will be written. Let it be so. But how he finished tonight in the Florida primary is not how he will be remembered. On 9/11 Rudy, with all his faults, was the right man, in the right place, at the right time. It is moot that someone else would have done better. Let’s hope that no one else has the chance to challenge his legacy. In my book, what Rudy did on 9/11 is a text-book case in crisis leadership: I saw it and felt it up close and personal. I survived. I’m a witness.
Posted: January 29th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
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Comment from Umous Akwitt
Time: January 29, 2008, 10:06 pm
A Legacy to Rudy … the day after the SC primaries -
All presidential candidates have to play the baby-kissing game, and here was an early chance for Rudy to show his softer side.
“So,” he whispered to the kids. “What do you all want to be when you grow up? Do any of you know?”
A bucktoothed boy raised his hand.
“I wanna be a doctor,” he said, “and a lawyer.”
The crowd laughs, then looks at Rudy expectantly. The obvious line is “A doctor and a lawyer? Whaddya want to do, sue yourself?” and you can see Rudy physically straining for the joke. But this candidate’s funny bone is a microscopic thing, like one of those anvil-shaped deals in the ear, and the line eludes him.
“A doctor and a lawyer, huh?” he says, grinning nervously. “Uh . . . whaddya want to do, sue the doctor?”
Rudy moves on. “How about you?” he said to the next boy.
“I want to be a policeman!” the kid says.
Rudy smiles. Then the next boy says he wants to be a fireman, and the crowd twitters: Wow, a fireman and a policeman, in the same room! Rudy is beaming now, almost certainly aware that every grown-up present is suddenly thinking about 9/11. “His day”. As he leans over, the room is filled with popping flashbulbs. Then, instead of capitalizing on the sense of pride and shared purpose everyone is feeling, Giuliani utters something truly strange and twisted.
“A fireman and a policeman, huh?” he says. “Well, the first thing that I want to do is make sure that you two get along.”
Huh? Amid confused applause, Rudy flashes a queer smile, then moves on to the heart of his presentation, a neat little speech about how the election of a Democratic president will result in certain nuclear attack and the end of the free market as we know it. I’m barely listening, however, still thinking about the “make sure you get along” line.
Although few people outside of New York know this yet, there is an emerging controversy over Giuliani’s heroic 9/11 legacy. Critics charge that Rudy’s failure to resolve the feuding between the city’s police and firefighters prior to the attack led to untold numbers of deaths, the most tragic example being the inability of firemen to hear warnings from police helicopters about the impending collapse of the South Tower. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the two departments had been “designed to work independently, not together,” and that greater coordination would have spared many lives.
Given all that, why did Rudy offer this weirdly unsolicited reference to the controversy now? Was he joking? And if so, what the fuck? It was a strange and bitter comment to make, especially right on the heels of his grand-slam performance in the previous night’s debate. If this is a guy who chews over a perceived slight in the middle of a victory lap, what would he have been like with his finger on the button? Even Richard Nixon wasn’t wound that tight.
His former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik up on multiple federal felony charges, was Rudy’s selection to head homeland security. Does anyone out there know if it had been Giuliani’s choice, to place New York City’s Emergency Command Center, in building #7 of the World Trade Center , even after the bombing of 1993 ?
Some legacy !
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