[lbo-talk] LA Times 9/17/07: The risk of President Giuliani

Carl Remick carlremick at gmail.com
Tue Sep 18 10:23:35 PDT 2007


On 9/18/07, Rick Kisséll <rick at kissell.org> wrote:
> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ferguson17sep17,0,4210564.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
> /From the Los Angeles Times/
>
> The risk of President Giuliani
>
> The tough-guy approach worked well for him as mayor of New York, but it
> wouldn't as president.
> Niall Ferguson


> ... 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 "Kojak" had been replaced by "Seinfeld."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



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