The Giuliani Papers

More Real Real Rudy

A very telling report on Giuliani was posted in the NY Times today. It should have been on the front page, but it was in campaign blog instead.

The "news" was about the bus(es).

The real news -- though anyone paying attention has known this since the campaign began -- is that Giuliani has NOTHING TO SAY.

First the "news.":

Three buses, actually. A snazzy white one, with loudspeakers on the roof that played Sousa marches and holiday songs, for the candidate and his inner circle. A pretty nice maroon one for the traveling press corps. (News organizations reimburse the campaign for the expense.) And a third, with a small painting of the New Hampshire State motto, “Live Free or Die,” for staff and supporters.

Then the truth (or some of it):

The only time Mr. Giuliani set foot on the press bus was to hand out slices of cheese cake from a diner in Concord and to wish the assembled hacks a happy Thanksgiving...Throughout two days of town hall meetings, stops at diners and shaking hands with voters at holiday events, the bus tour provided no formal opportunity for reporters to ask Mr. Giuliani anything.

The rest of the truth is that Giuliani is afraid to answer questions from the press unless the press are "favored news organizations" (Fox) who get "invites onto seats on his bus...Most of the pack waited in vain."

Giuliani is afraid to answer questions from voters too. That's why he puts a campaign worker shill in the crowd and calls on that "voter" first.

At one town hall meeting in Nashua, and then at a breakfast at a supporter’s house in Windham, N.H., he called first on the same campaign volunteer...In Nashua, the volunteer, Richard Florino, asked, “What makes the liberal Democrats so wrong about the threats that this country faces?’’ In Windham, he asked about the alternate minimum tax, and about why Mr. Romney had “basically disowned Reaganomics” when he ran for Senate against Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1994.

Maybe David Brooks can tell us which of the real Rudys is afraid to answer questions.

The Real Real Rudy

Last Friday David Brooks titled his NY Times column "The Real Rudy." It was another attempt to paint Giuliani as a "moderate" at "heart," this time on immigration. Brooks used quotes from several speeches Giuliani gave prior to his reelection campaign in 1997. The only thing "real" about Rudy is his easy exploitation of politically expedient policy. He is not a "moderate" by any measure. And as for his "heart," that has never been a working part of his anatomy.

Brooks laments the passing of Rudy's "inner light" which, when shining, turns him "downright idealistic." Proof of this "compassion" rests on statements made in October 1996, such as:

"There are times,” he declared, “when undocumented aliens must have a substantial degree of protection.” They must feel safe sending their children to school. They should feel safe reporting crime to the police. “Similarly, illegal and undocumented immigrants should be able to seek medical help without the threat of being reported. When these people are sick, they are just as sick and just as contagious as citizens.”

Such enlightenment on immigration, Brooks says, was the reason "why Giuliani won 43 percent of the Hispanic vote in the mayoral race of 1997." What Brooks doesn't say is that Giuliani, along with his running mate Herman Badillo, had made a strategic decision in 1993 to divide the black vote from the Hispanic vote and thereby defeat a liberal (black) Democrat in a liberal (yet fearful) city.

Giuliani's "inner light" on immigration was simply the glare of cynical big city political expediency. The NY Times commented at the time: "Not since the heyday of Lee Atwater have we seen such devious artistry when it comes to stirring feelings of racial paranoia among whites."

After his recent column whitewashing Reagan's race-baiting, rewriting history seems to be Brooks' new beat.