How much worse a president would Rudy Giuliani be than Bush? Author Kevin Baker counts the ways.

[marmar]

article | posted July 30, 2007 (web only)
President Rudy
Jon Wiener


In recent polls, Rudy Giuliani leads his rivals in the Republican primary race by about ten points. That's surprising, since he's been a supporter of gay rights, abortion rights and immigrant rights as well as gun control. It suggests that a President Giuliani would be better than Bush. I asked Kevin Baker--he's author of the well-known City of Fire trilogy of novels about New York City--Strivers Row, Dreamland and Paradise Alley. He also writes for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Harper's, where his essay, "A Fate Worse Than Bush," leads the magazine's August issue.

Giuliani's main claim to fame is his conduct immediately after 9/11. Many still remember his TV press conference the night of the attacks, when a reporter asked how many casualties there would be. Giuliani had a magnificent answer: "More than we can bear." Compared to what President Bush was saying, that was Shakespeare.

But what about the rest of his performance around 9/11?

"Most of 9-11 was actually a debacle for the city government," Baker told me in an interview, and "Giuliani bears a great deal of the responsibility." The World Trade Center had been attacked in 1993, but Giuliani had "learned none of the lessons that could have been learned. There was no serious attempt to coordinate the radios between the police and fire departments, or even to insure that the fire department had its own communications that would work inside buildings." The consequences? "Probably hundreds of unnecessary deaths that day."

The second failure: Giuliani insisted on locating his emergency control center in the World Trade Center complex, even though that had been the target of the 1993 attack. "He did that against the advice of virtually all the security experts he consulted," Baker explained. "He put it on the twenty-third floor of a forty-seven-story building, World Trade Center Tower 7. It included an unprotected, 7,000 gallon fuel source on the seventh floor, a sort of a fuse to set the building off. When the building was hit by debris on 9/11, that did indeed bring the whole building down." ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070813/wiener

[Luke_R]

1. I think it's funny that he's using his proximity to the attacks as a reason to elect him

By that same logic, Strom Thurmond should have used the civil rights movement during campaigns.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. What a great line!

welcome to DU

[MasonJar]

3. It is hard to imagine anyone worse than Bush/Cheney. Giuliani and

Romney and Thompson and McCain all seem to be arrogant and unreasonable; however, there is no one more evil or stupid surely.

[Wetzelbill]

4. one problem is Bush was handed a great situation

after 8 pretty good years. Rudy, or the others, would be given an already sinking ship. We'd be worse off because they would just keep digging a hole.