Union Square Station
Malone
5/15

Back in the Shadows Again?

Giuliani will be long gone by this time next year, and New York City's new mayor, whoever he is, will be less capable, less honest, less diligent and, worst of all, much less intelligent. If you add that all up, the city faces a real chance of slipping back into the shadows out of which Giuliani dragged it.

The city's political culture consistently chases any bad idea that comes along if it has been anointed as "progressive" by someone with a big enough mouth. Giuliani has the strength of mind to ignore, deflect, or otherwise thwart that sort of thing. None of the people who might follow him, as the field looks now, will have that same talent. Likewise, Giuliani knew what had to be done about crime and how to do it and how to keep doing it. Again, of his likely successors, none appears to be up to the job.

One of the frequent complaints about Giuliani is that he is "arrogant." He might be, and it might be that someone has to be arrogant to even consider running for mayor of this city. But he surely has never been so arrogant as the prickly David Dinkins. Nor has Giuliani ever been so unabashedly self-congratulatory as the double-talking Ed Koch, who is still running his mouth into his twelfth year out of office.

Nothing about Giuliani is more impressive than his "town hall" meetings, which are held regularly around the city and shown live on NY1, the obnoxious Time-Warner all-news channel. He stands in front of an often aggressive, sometimes hostile crowd that has come to complain. With profound patience, he responds intelligently to each person who waits on line to make it to a microphone.

In what could be the most direct language ever used by a politician, he deals with issues arising at these meetings in a way that actually causes them to be understood. He gives them context and adds perspective. His flair for this benefits not just those bringing the problems but also his own aides and commissioners. They sit behind him, and after he calibrates the issues he refers them directly for handling by the right person.

Before Giuliani came along the city had grown increasingly repulsive, dangerous, and corrupt. Asked by a friend back in the late 80s how it was to live here, I told him that it was what I imagined a Nazi bomb shelter to be like at the end of World War II. It was stifling and riddled with paranoia. 

There was no such thing as a relaxed evening walk. Sociopaths of all kinds had license to operate on every other corner. Sick, insane people, celebrated by intellectual midgets as being merely poor and out of work, were rotting to death in doorways. And the cops circled around it all as though it were really none of their business. 

With no adults clearly in charge, school kids acted out as a matter of routine, as though their parents had left them the house for the weekend. The F-word seemed to be the subject, predicate, and object of every sentence.

In the very worst neighborhoods murders were happening in a business-as-usual mode, while people slept on their floors so that they would have less chance of being struck by a stray bullet flying through the window.

And in the early '90s, Giuliani's predecessor allowed a riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn to continue for three days, refusing to order police to stop it, as a mob relentlessly threatened harm against a community of orthodox Jews. It was the proverbial last straw.

That was the ungovernable city that political pros once spoke of, and the source of their laughter at the thought that Giuliani -- who promised to fix it -- would do any better than his hapless predecessors.

Now that it has been turned around to where people visiting here can't believe their eyes, the same old clown operation that let the place go to hell wants to take it back. Unless someone steps up ready to challenge them, we very well could be headed into the shadows again.

Meanwhile, thank you for restoring civilization, Rudy.

© Union Square Journal 2001

Previously by Malone...

All the Depth of a Roosevelt Dime (05/09/01)

Like Being Lakeside in the Adirondacks (05/08/01)

Get Off Him (04/04/01)

They Ran the White House Like a Chop Shop (02/28/01)

Hannibal: The Silence of the Critics (02/16/01)

Reagan's Two Terrible Mistakes (02/06/01)

The Return of the Hero (01/19/01)

The Hero of Chappaquiddick (01/11/01)

Real Millennium Strange (01/03/01)

Smoke 'em if you got 'em (12/21/00)

Union Square Station (12/11/00)

Union Square Station (12/3 back to 11/24/00)