Rudy Giuliani and Neoconservatism
By Nicholas Stix (07/23/05)
Neoconservatives are touting Rudy Giuliani for president in 2008, but is “America’s Mayor” what America really needs?
In last Saturday’s New York Times, columnist David Brooks began beating the drum for Rudy Giuliani, either as a presidential candidate or as Sen. John McCain’s (Party of One-AZ) veep, in 2008.
This is not news. Rudy Giuliani may have known he wanted to become president at a younger age (while in his mother’s womb?) than even Bill Clinton did. And the man who could say, with a straight face, that he didn’t know that the first of his three wives was a cousin, is clearly a liar of presidential proportions – and he doesn’t even need to bite his lip.
When Giuliani was cited, first for New York’s crime-fighting “revolution” and then, after 911, for his Churchillian leadership during the city’s darkest days, even liberals gave away in so many words, that the man had “chief executive” written all over him.
The GOP, of course, had already set Giuliani up as a possible heir at last year’s Republican Convention in New York City. And Giuliani gave a marvelous keynote speech, presenting himself as a national leader who nonetheless had not forgotten where he came from.
David Brooks touts Giuliani and McCain as partisans of a non-partisan politics of “courage.”
The courage politicians organize their energies by picking fights with venal foes. They locate some corrupt power center that violates their sense of honor. For [Teddy] Roosevelt it was the trusts; for R.F.K., the mob; for McCain, the campaign finance system or K Street; for Giuliani, the bloated Board of Education or the self-indulgent edifice of urban liberalism.
Then they charge in, never more tranquil than when in the midst of combat, never more convinced of their own value than when the foe is big and powerful.
They demand complete, almost blind, loyalty from their friends, but their leadership is clear and unflinching….
In public life they tend to flee from the politics of family values, believing that government can do little that is productive or good in this sphere. They handle social issues with obvious discomfort, and pick them up only reluctantly and out of political necessity….
As one reads through [historian Fred Siegel’s Giuliani/New York book] ‘The Prince of the City,’ one question keeps reoccurring: Are we Americans so blessed with political talent that we can afford not to use the courage politicians we do happen to have in our midst?
Brooks claims that Giuliani has no chance with the party hierarchy, but he doth protest too much. What did he think was going on, when the party brass made Giuliani a keynoter in 2004?
And his ideal type of “courage politician” is the journalistic equivalent of a computer graphics program melding the faces of McCain and Giuliani. This has been Brooks’ project since his days at the weekly standard, back in 2000, when he and editor Bill Kristol backed McCain for president.
Until fellows like New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966-1973) and Sen. George “I’ll Get Down on My Hands and Knees and Beg for Our POWs” McGovern (D-SD), the 1972 Democrat presidential candidate came along, Democrats and Republicans alike expected “courage” (read: toughness) of their leaders.
Now, I love Fred Siegel. He’s my favorite living writer on New York City. And yet, I am afraid that Siegel has bought into Giuliani’s PR machine, and let his hopes get the better of him, rather than confront New York’s reality.
As I have shown repeatedly since 1996, much of Giuliani’s “revolution” in reducing crime and welfare was fraudulent. The NYPD began a massive campaign combining de-policing (avoiding confrontations with blacks and Hispanics) with the “disappearing” of crime. As William Rashbaum, Leonard Levitt, and myself have reported, the NYPD would variously downgrade felonies to misdemeanors or non-crimes, or not record them at all. And as I reported in 1998, Giuliani continued the policy of his black socialist predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins, in transferring tens of thousands of welfare clients to better-paying federal disability Supplemental Security Income, which is not counted as welfare.
Regarding Brooks’ claims that Giuliani took on “the bloated Board of Education [and] the self-indulgent edifice of urban liberalism,” the first has no basis in fact, and the second is so vague as to be meaningless.
With that said, I am convinced that Rudy Giuliani was the greatest mayor in New York’s history, and would have been, had 911 never happened. He successfully faced down a cabal of racist black leaders who preferred that the city burn down, than that it be governed by a white.
But do I want him as my president?
Brooks says that a “courage” politician shies away from social questions, but that’s hogwash. John McCain is anti-abortion and supports the Second Amendment. He also supports illegal immigration. And Giuliani doesn’t shy away from such questions, either. He is enthusiastic about violating American citizens’ Second Amendment rights, and supports gay rights, women’s right to abortion, and the “rights” of illegal immigrants. What Brooks really means is, ‘I, David Brooks, and my neocon cronies, most notably Bill Kristol, publicly handle social issues with obvious discomfort.’ (Although Brooks had no problem advocating for gay marriage, even to the point of misrepresenting Bible passages.)
Brooks & Co.’s real project has nothing to do with “courage,” but as my colleague Jim Antle pointed out in 2000, it is to run conservatives, Southerners, and Evangelicals out of the national GOP, and remake it in their own image, which also happens to be that of the politically neutered New York City Republican Party. Brooks and his Party of Courage dream of a Republican Party politically cleansed of the Right. That Party would yield to the Left on all important questions.
Oddly enough, the neoconservative movement, of whom David Brooks is a leading light, once courageously confronted black racism, affirmative action, and anti-Americanism. But that was before the movement’s leaders established themselves as GOP court sophists.
While I am second to none in my admiration for Rudy Giuliani, I do not want a president who is pro-gay rights, pro-illegal immigration, intent on violating the Second Amendment, and whose stand on abortion is identical to that of NARAL.
I would hope, rather, that a future conservative president (or at least, one that would honor America’s sovereignty) would name Giuliani to his cabinet … and keep his distance from Brooks & Co.
Copyright © 2005 by Nicholas Stix All Rights Reserved.
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