> ... Let me be clear: I do not think Giuliani is the best of the Republican
> candidates. I have been playing a (frankly very minor) role as an
> advisor to John McCain, who never ceases to impress me with his guts,
> grit and gumption.
Not to mention McCain's insane temper and odd sense of humor. All together now (to the tune of "Barbara Ann"): "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb, Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb, Iran."
> ...I remember visiting the pre-Giuliani Manhattan. It was like one long
> episode of "Kojak." The professions then open to young New Yorkers were
> dealer, hood, hooker, junkie, pimp -- or bent cop. Yet by the time I
> moved to the city, not long after 9/11, the analysts outnumbered the
> psychos. "Kojak" had been replaced by "Seinfeld." A large share of the
> credit for that transformation belongs to Giuliani.
Ferguson better get his Haldol dosage adjusted. I worked in New York City from 1974-2000, and the pre-Giuliani NYC quality of life was far better than that of post-Giuliani NYC -- which, unless you're a billionaire, is pretty much just a bland, suburban-style mall for tourists (e.g. Times Square).
You'd think that mucho macho Niall Ferguson wouldn't have been so easily flapped by the robust street life of pre-Giuliani NYC. Check Ferguson's biker jacket and yobbish sneer in the photo of him that accompanies his column at the LA Times website.
> ... Applied to cleaning up the mean streets of New York, Giuliani's
> offensive approach worked pretty well (though it eventually ended in
> overkill). How well it can work as foreign policy is another matter
> altogether.
You'd never guess from this column that Ferguson has been at least as redoubtable a propagandist for the New Imperialism as Christopher Hitchens.
Carl