This may be more Great Debates in response, but I’ll let the mods decide.
For those who lived in NYC or its metro area (i.e. close enough to see up close the effect even if you did not live there), what did you think of Giuliani prior to 9-11? I’ve read mixed reviews, but the jist seems to be that he was draconian but the streets were undeniably safer.
What was the worst thing he did as mayor that affected your life or those of people you knew? What was the best?
Did 9-11 greatly alter how you felt about him in total?
He was an earnest and honest politician but one who did NOT play well with others, including others that he had specifically put into their positions. Do a Google on him and “police commissioner” and another on him and “school chancellor”.
He was also kind of oblivious to the need to orchestrate political appearances (“spin”), most notably not doing anything to counter the impression that anything the police did was automatically OK with him. His background as a prosecutor did make him a natural ally of the police. Most of the uproar about him siding with the police when there were police versus citizens issues (police brutality, police shootings of unarmed people, etc) didn’t really involve him DOING anything but rather statements and comments he made, so I’m characterizing it as a “spin” issue rather than a “policy” or “slanted decisions” issue, and I don’t really have a problem with a mayor giving the police department the benefit of the doubt and giving them a chance to process the behavior of their officers fairly and properly, but he sure could’ve handled the appearances-and-impressions side of it a lot better than he did.
ETA too late for the OP: His handling of 9/11 was spot-on and set just the right tone. So he undid a lot of the impression that he could not handle the interact-with-your-constituents side of being a politician. He stopped potential panic, kept us informed, and stepped up as the quintessential New Yorker who was not going to be fazed or intimidated by terrorists, and yet at the same time did so without seeming uncaring to the families and friends of those who perished in the Towers. He even reassured us about the Federal Government during the interval in which we weren’t hearing much from them.
As for making the streets safer, he gets some credit but so do demographics: the big bulge in the US population moved out of the age-range where males tend to perpetrate crime & violence, and into a later age-bracket where you see far less of that, and thus crime all across the country went down, so did so here as well. The NYPD has always been a good department; one could generally trust that the police officers themselves would obey the law, would conduct themselves professionally and efficiently. As I mentioned above, Giuliani could have done a lot better job of spin-control and since he did not, some New Yorkers got the impression that the police had become stormtroopers or had been given carte blanche to harass various populations and groups inside or beyond the purview of the law… but I think they were still a very professional force under Giuliani (and continue to be), and he did take care of them in the sense of making sure they had the budgets and equipment to do their job well.
I remember reading that NYPD rookies had a starting salary in the 1990s that was around $25K or some other similarly ridiculous amount- essentially a Manhattan cop could only live in Manhattan if he lived with his parents or had several roommates. Is Giuliani the reason that went up or was that before his time?
Giuliani likes to be in control and doesn’t like dissent. Which works for those people who want a strong leader to take charge. It doesn’t work as well for people who disagree with Giuliani’s decisions and try to convince him to do something else.
He was great. He reduced taxes. The crime rate decreased dramatically, far more than in most other cities during those years. But there are some things you just can’t do in a city that’s dominated by liberals.
I don’t recall the specifics but he’s been credited with funding the police force so they could do their job. It makes sense that it would include a salary bump, especially starting salary.
He was big on “quality of life offenses” – abandoned cars, grafitti, turnstile jumping – supposedly the later was particularly effective at catching people also carrying drugs/guns. MTA got a big influx of funds and did large amounts of renovations – including the transistion to Metrocard which is a lot more commuter friendly (back in the token days there were few discounts for bulk purchases and no monthly pass).
Also, he all but outlawed strip clubs, and definitely cleaned up Times Sq. People have mixed opinions about these two things but IMHO its good for NYC overall.
I remember when Giuliani was first elected he was considered to be rather humorless… his image was softened somewhat when his son imitated him humorously at his inaugural speech.
Sampiro, thank you for starting this thread. I had been trying to figure out a way to talk about Giuliani and his presidential bid here at the worldwide Dope, without making the discussion too local to New York. I’ve lived here in Crown Heights for 26 years and have seen my neighborhood and New York change, due to many different reasons.
I would like to piggy-back on what AHunter3 said:
I agree with most of what you said (well-stated, I might add) except that:
Giuliani consistently, throughout his two terms, issued statements where police shootings were involved, that blindly backed the police. You would think that after the kerfuffle over the first few, he’d have learned to take more of a “wait and see” attitude. Bloomberg (a good mayor, I think) does not do this, and I think it reflects well on him.
Giuliani should get a lot of credit for the drop in crime, but not all of it. While many denigrate David Dinkins as mayor, some of the programs that brought crime down and the shift in demographics started during his administration.
Giuliani, true to your characterization, did not play well with others, including those he appointed/hired. Throughout his reign, he refused to meet with many black and other minority leaders, including Al Sharpton (controversial, I’ll give him this one, though I disagree); but, also, elected officials, including C. Virginia Fields, then-Borough President of Manhattan, the latino Borough President of the Bronx (I can’t remember his name, right now), and many other minority elected officials – councilman, assemblymen, etc.
As you and others have said, he is divisive, always rights and he governed sometimes by fiat. This is not * a way to be a leader * of a multi-cultural city like New York, and, though these are qualities our feckless commander in chief demonstrates now, not the way to go as leader of the free world.
I was two blocks away from the WTC that day and had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, covered in the dust from the towers’ collapse, to safety.
While there was panic at first, pretty much from the get-go, everybody was calm (dazed and shocked, I think). This was well before any of us had any opportunity to be exposed to Giuliani’s “leadership.”
While, he did what any mayor would need to do in that situation (not badly, I might add), I think the impression most people took away from that day happened because Giuliani realized what an opportunity (sorry, had to say it) it was, and carefully crafted what images were presented to the public and the world.
In Freakonomics, David Dinkins–the guy who preceded Rudy–gets some credit for reducing crime because he increased the police force considerably. It’s just that the effect didn’t show up until Guiliani’s tenure.
I was living in northern Jersey during Rudy’s reign. I was pretty neutral towards the guy until Patrick Dorismond was killed by the police. Instead of offering solace to the innocent man’s family or at least taking a wait and see approach, the mayor went to the media and sullied Dorismond’s name by unsealing his juvenile record. Essentially telling everyone, “See, this wasn’t a choir boy! He deserved to die!”
If you follow the link above, you’ll see why this was so very wrong.
Well, I’m a little unusual in my set (liberal democrats) for having loved Guiliani from the minute he took office.
I remember when he was sworn in – his ill-behaved little son was bouncing all over the stage. And to me, that’s a good omen. As a New Yorker, my favorite mayors have always been those with big personalities that you notice, for better or worse. So I loved Mayor Koch, and snoozed through Dinkins. Bloomberg has been a mixed bag for me – his first administration started off dull but he’s slowly been winning me over with his quiet snarkiness.
When Giuliani went after the Brooklyn Museum of Art for showing a mixed media piece, with the media in question being the Virgin Mary and poo, my fellow liberals wanted his head on a pike. Me – I loved it. Record numbers of people went to the Brooklyn Museum because it was on the news 24-7 (literally, we have a 24 hour local news station). This is sort of the main theme about Giuliani for me – even when I disagreed with him, he often pushed topics into the limelight resulting in people being more aware than usual about city issues.
My personal favorite Giuliani moment prior to 9/11 was when he took on the UN diplomats’ unpaid parking violations. The White House called and asked him to back off, and he wouldn’t. They did owe a lot of money, and THEY DOUBLE PARK ALL THE TIME AND IT’S A FREAKIN’ MESS UP THERE.
Somewhat more seriously, I agreed with his immigration stance while he was in office, and I have mixed, but mostly positive, feelings about his support of gay rights. He pushed same sex domestic partnerships through the city council and extended benefits for domestic partners to city employees although he doesn’t support legal marriage (and seems to back into a religious defense on that one).
This is a man who tried to get rid of street vendors because they were unfair competition for brick and mortar business due to their low overhead. He also tried to do away with Taxis.
His policies against night clubs hurt tourism in the city. It spurned European tourists for Midwestern tourists. He shut down a bunch of nightclubs and put a lot of people working in the clubs out of business, but in addition to that I read somewhere that bars and restaurants suffered from it as well. He hurt New York culture quite a bit.
Giuliani did a wonderful job tackling crimes that no one ever cared about before.
Before he was mayor, it was impossible to drive down many streets without being accosted by menacing people threatening to smear your windshields unless you gave them money. You couldn’t see out of any subway windows because of the graffiti (and no, it wasn’t art, it was vandalism).
He held district commanders responsible for any crime increases in their precincts. Crime did go down as a result. He stopped the daily street protests in Flatbush, something Dinkins was unable or unwilling to do.
All that being said, he was also a very intolerant person who held grudges .
Excuse my language, but he had a major “hard-on” for the teachers, and the UFT. He blamed teachers for every ill in the school system, and trampled over the union.
As for post 9/11, I don’t think his actions were scripted. In the face of fear and uncertainty, I felt he was a steadying hand for the city. We needed a strong leader, and personally I think he was just what we all needed.
A mixed bag. I liked his relative fiscal discipline (compared to past mayors – Bloomberg puts him to shame in this and most other categories). I, along with everyone else, loved that he put a stop to the homeless squeegee assault. Problem was, that went hand in hand with his going after artists selling their paintings on the street and other such harmless liberties. I didn’t care for his use of “creative” (i.e. borderline unconstitutional) zoning codes to push porn out of the Times Square area and replace it with Disney stores, but I can see how other people would prefer it the way it is now.
Like a lot of others, whatever misgivings I had about the man, I was glad to have a competent hard-ass in charge on 9/11.
I loved him. He may have had his faults, but he had a no-nonsense, will-not-suffer-fools attitude that I think works for a leader. Sort of like Dogbert with a little less ambition (only a little less).
I do think Bloomberg is actually better than Guiliani - but I think Giuliani paved the way for Bloomberg. Without Giuliani, we probably would have just plodded through another dozen years of uninspired Democratic machine politicians whose “turn” it was to be mayor, having put in their time as a Borough President.
mswas:
I defy you to prove that his cleanup of Times Square hurt tourism. I know there’s a small, vocal crowd that actually liked that one of the hubs of city transportation and entertainment was infested with crime and sleaze and considered it part of NYC “culture”, but the “Disney-fication” of the area was FANTASTIC not just for attracting Midwestern tourists, but foreign ones as well…and made it more atractive for native New Yorkers well.
wallet:
People cared, but politicians or police never did - they just conceded the little things to the petty criminals as a low-return investment of manpower, hoping to net some big-fish drug kingpins or Mafia dons instead. Giuliani turned that strategy on its ear, following the “broken windows” theory, and it worked wonders.
That’s because several of his zoning laws were shot down in court.
At first I liked Giuliani, but as time progressed, he left the impression that he was not a democratically-elected mayor, but a emperor whose will was not to be crossed. He most certainly did not play well with others, and his blind backing of the NYPD in the Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond cases was shameful. He was effective, but certainly not someone to whom I would ever wish to see power granted again.
Lastly, and the reason I will never, ever back Giuliani in anything he ever does, he outlawed ferrets in NYC, making me a criminal. His reasons are ridiculous at best, likening a 2-3 pound ferret to pythons and tigers. His unwillingness and inability to listen to reason and fact, and instead pursue such a stupid cause so blindly ignorant, cemented what type of politician and person Rudy Giuliani is.
All in all he was a good mayor for the city, but exactly the sort of leader that shows why term limits were introduced. I do think his focus on “quality of life” crimes helped cut crime overall, but that was arguably as much or more Police Chief Bratton’s initiative, who has gone on to do very well in successfully implementing similar initiatives after going to LA. He shook up many areas of city government that were bloated and stagnating in the status quo.
However, his immediate dismissal of of the accusations of even extremely sympathetic “victims” of police actions (such as Abner Louima or Amadou Dialou) struck many the wrong way. Coupled with his strong-arm politics, many felt he was someone who would love to be a dictator of a police state, or as close to it as he could get away with.
I, like many other New Yorkers, was suprised, moved and impressed with his handling of 9/11. I don’t think he was scripting or acting at all, he was as visibly shaken and shocked as any of us as he gave his first press conferences just hours later. But he bearing and words struck just the right balance between terrible sadness, profound and defiant anger, and a frank and pragmatic “figure out what needs to be done now, and do it as soon as possible” attitude. It was a very stark contrast with the seeming paralysis of leadership on display from Washington, DC.
Me, I can’t stand that he initiated the ban on firecrackers in Chinatown during Chinese New Year. The event is simply not the same now. Last year they allowed a staged firecracker lighting event in a central square, which is better than nothing, but it’s still just not the same to me. I feel that I and my children have been robbed of a cultural touchstone, and the city robbed of a major tourist draw.
Yes, I’m sure that he did a great many things that were good, especially for Manhattan. However, as someone who doesn’t live in Manhattan I can tell you that the crime just moved into the outer boroughs. He cleaned up the panhandlers and window washers in midtown, but I noticed a marked increase of people sleeping on the trains in the morning, or aggressively panhandling at a line of cars at an off ramp stoplight where you are effectively trapped. (tap, tap on window “Can I hava dolla?”)
He was terrible at working with the board of ed, and while I’m no fan of Randi Weingarten, Bloomberg has done a much better job over the past few years with education.
Some of us middle class people liked shopping for lunch at street vendors because we could not afford mid-town lunch everyday, or couldn’t take a full sit down hour lunch, but he couldn’t see that. He saw restaurants complaining that their seats weren’t as full as they would have liked.
There were many, many times I felt during his administration that he believed New York City only consisted of Manhattan. This issue in particular is what concerns me about him becoming president, namely that he would cater to the upper-crust or special interest.
He also was one of the most vocal people calling for a Clinton impeachment, while carrying on with his mistress, in public, at Yankee games. It smacks of hypocrisy.