Guiliani

I think we should have a thread that tries to get to the truth of the Guiliani story.

First, let's address the pros:

1. "Guiliani massively reduced crime in New York City". The statistic looks impressive, but have a look at a graphic from the Wikipedia article on him (link). In reality the crime rate in Newark went down by more, L.A. nearly as much, and nationally there was a decline, though not as much. Worse, there's reason to think that at least some of the decrease in crime in NYC wasn't real, but resulted from Guiliani policies that encouraged cops to reduce the number of crimes counted. This national decline matches up with the Clinton administration - so actually Guiliani is taking credit for what was mostly the work of a Democratic national government.

2. "Guiliani was America's Mayor, fighting on 9/11". Personally, I believe what Al Sharpton said: "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor". I have to ask whether another mayor would have done better about rescuers getting terrible respiratory problems, human remains in manholes, or the ponderous, mercenary quality of the negotiations over rebuilding something on the site. And to top it all off he has been blamed for all but single-handedly destroying the smaller WTC 7 building by putting an emergency operations center there, which contributed nothing but tons of diesel fuel to the fire.

I'll summarize some cons a little more briefly:

1. "Lifetime Muzzle Award" for an endless succession of actions hostile to freedom of speech, most notably his attempt to force the local art museum to remove pieces he didn't like. (* this was when he really ran afoul of my public opinion)

2. Bernard Harding and Russell Kerik appointments - both involving eventual corruption charges.

3. Imperial New York - he started the precedent of sending NYC law enforcement all over New York and surrounding states to sue local gun stores or attack pyrotechnics events.

4. Herding pedestrians - as I recollect he was famous for starting a war on pedestrians involving prosecution of "jaywalkers", intersections that can only be crossed in some ridiculously convoluted way, and continuing under his successor even to last week (now they don't want pedestrians with IPods!)

Lastly: what I still don't know how to argue against are his successful prosecution of Mafia members (can anyone that honest really be a Republican???) and his gay-rights stance. Unless someone can counter these claims they are powerful assets still in his possession.