Rudy Giuliani

By: Sam Craig

Posted: 8/31/07

In the mediocre Las Vegas buffet that is the spate of potential candidates for the presidency, Rudy Giuliani is the dried-up, baked trout that has been sitting under the heat lamp a little too long.
Giuliani is convinced that his seven years as New York City's mayor would make him a great president and he's willing to say or do anything---no matter how divisive---to get elected.
While he did take a commanding role during the Sept. 11 attacks and worked tirelessly during the recovery efforts. A fact he continually brings up at the republican debates. During a disaster, taking control of the situation and bringing in help from the federal government is exactly what a mayor is supposed to do. Simply doing one's job isn't reason enough to be the President of the United States of America.
Before the attacks raised his approval rating to nearly 80 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll a year before, he was pulling in ratings as low as 36 percent. The reason for that is very simple. He was essentially an authoritarian.
He built up the police force by more than 7,000 members in order to crackdown on relatively inconsequential crimes like graffiti artists, turnstile jumpers, and homeless people who slept on the streets. He turned New York City's police force into a baby-sitting service rather than focusing their efforts on major crimes.
He also forced out private, legal businesses in Times Square. Although the businesses---peep shows, video game arcades, and souvenir shops---may have been unseemly and an eyesore, they were legal, privately owned enterprises and had as much of a right to be there as the Disney stores, Applebees, and Virgin mega stores that have now taken their places.
For someone whose platform speaks so highly of independent businesses, he certainly seems to have a different idea of what the free market is compared to most economists.
And speaking of Giuliani's campaign platform, his "12 Commitments to the American People" section on his website, joinrudy2008.com, can't help but contradict it self.
In one "commitment," he states, "I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation." Fair enough, illegal immigration is one of the main concerns of many voters, but in the "commitment" directly after it, he writes, "I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful Washington spending." I'm not exactly sure, but I have the feeling that resources required for finding and identifying every non-citizen in our country would constitute the antithesis of fiscal discipline and bring to mind thoughts of an authoritarian dictatorship.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates there are between 11.5 and 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. In order to find, process, and keep track of so many people, the size and scope of government spending would have to increase massively and to a level unparalleled by even the most wasteful of federal programs.
Whether it's gay rights, abortion, gun control, terrorism, or personal liberty and freedom, Giuliani is contradictive and indecisive on all of them.
"America's mayor" would quite possibly be the worst choice for America's president.