Rudy Can Fail

I might take Rudy Giuliani seriously if he said things that proved he actually thought before he spoke.

Stumping in Iowa he managed to come off like a high school student chewing his pencil to a nub while facing the SAT. First, there are these brilliant lines about health care, and why the government shouldn't be part of it (not sure what he thinks about Medicaid and Medicare, then, either):

He likened the health care industry to that of plasma televisions, saying that if the federal government had required all Americans to own a plasma TV and paid for those who couldn’t afford it, lower quality televisions would cost upwards of $15,000 today, instead of higher quality ones now being available for only $2,000.

“The free market operated, lots of consumers got into the market, they bought TVs, and manufacturers realized that if they reduced the price they’d get more customers,” Giuliani said. “How do you get health care providers to start thinking that way? The only way you do it is to have 70 million customers bring the price down and the quality up.”

After all, you can't live without a plasma TV. Those requiring health care aren't customers buying a product, Rudy--they're getting something we all need, for if you aren't healthy, eventually you aren't. Period. Despite what society might say, I can make it to a ripe old age without a 42" flat screen on which to watch the latest news about Lindsay Lohan. Meanwhile the insurance companies, in our current poorly functioning, inefficient system, have us with our hands on our knees and they aren't doing prostate checks.

And don't tell me health care shouldn't be a right. First, if you're all so religious, you're supposed to care about other people. I missed the part where Jesus/Allah/Jehovah/Buddha/FSM said, "Sink or swim, losers." Second, just think about it selfishly, if appealing to your altruism doesn't work (hey, I feel altruistic towards others without a religiously imposed moral system, what's your problem?). Do you want tons of sick folks surrounding you? Do you want to have to pay for their more drastic emergency care because they aren't insured and don't get to prevent ill-health in the first place? I guess you want to be sure there's something that separates you from the hoi polloi. Once upon a time the rich were pale as the poor worked in the fields; then the rich had tans as the poor worked in factories; now the rich have health, and the poor be damned.

Unfortunately for Giuliani, his inability to reason extends beyond economics and health care to global security.

Citing past examples of conflict where the United Nations had not been a driving force for peace, Giuliani said the organization was often “irrelevant” to international conflicts that it was intended to handle.

“We’ve got to be realistic about the U.N. – it’s a place to go talk,” he said. “It’s not a place you’re likely to go to solve really serious problems.”

After all, no serious problem was ever solved by talking. Can't get along with your wife, Rudy? Divorce her. Can't deal with a foreign nation? Bomb it. How manly and decisive and utterly stupid of you.

Richie Rich and Whitey White

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2008 Republicans!

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani hasn't done a lot of grocery shopping lately — at least based on his answers about the cost of milk and bread.

[...]

When asked about more mundane matters — like the price of some basic staples — Giuliani had trouble with a reporter's question.

"A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30," he said.

A check of the Web site for D'Agostino supermarket on Manhattan's Upper East Side showed a gallon of milk priced at $4.19 and a loaf of white bread at $2.99 to $3.39. In Montgomery, Ala., a gallon of milk goes for about $3.39 and bread is about $2.

Out of touch isn't quite the word--no wonder the Republicans only seem to represent people for whom the cost of food doesn't matter. Then again, Giuliani might be better off than rival John McCain, who has entirely different if equally mistaken perceptions when he goes to market.

Oh, why was Giuliani in Alabama? To attend $1,000-per-person campaign fundraisers in Mobile and Montgomery...and to suck up to racists as well, for he insisted that flying the Confederate flag should be left to each state to decide. Good thing for him there's a nifty Venn diagram where the white folk and the rich folk meet.

You Add It Up It Brings You Down

So the News-Press received its latest installment from the satellite inhabited by Dr. (of Physiology) Laura today, out in its orbit pulled by the gravitational forces of Wendy McCaw, George W. Bush, and all the hypocritical moral scourges that have come before her. The first part of her column attacks the Santa Barbara Newsroom, but what else could it do, for the Newsroom is the home for all the fired former News-Press journalists. This rant, which belittles all unions (each worker, of course, should just stand up and take responsibility for him or herself--that's the way to fight unscrupulous owners who have all the power!) is boring--what else would a News-Press lackey like Laura Schlessinger say? It must be something to write and never surprise oneself with where one ends up.

No, I'd rather look at the second part of her column with the subhead "Cure for Gangs." In her typically authoritarian manner, her answer to the problem is simple--police, and lots of them (gee, does she know they have a union?). The kicker, of course, is this claim:

When he was mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani used the police force wisely and made the crime rate in New York City (a bit bigger and more complicated than Santa Barbara) plummet. He managed to do this without creating more fun and games for gangster types in hopes of distracting them. Just good old law presence and enforcement.

Yep, good ole (ok, she didn't spell it that way, which takes the Pusser out of it, but you know what I mean) law presence and enforcement. Just ask Amadou Diallo about that. So, beyond turning New York City into a police state that could be as scary for people of color as today's Baghdad is for everyone but John McCain, what else did Rudy Giuliani accomplish as mayor? The 2006 film Giuliani Time, widely praised, offers some suggestions. Here's some of Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times:

"He was a one-trick magician, and that was crime," says Ruth Messinger, one of his unsuccessful opponents. Yet for all the talk that he was a mayor who "brought joy, safety and greatness back to New York City," Giuliani Time claims the mythology doesn't always stand up to scrutiny.

For one thing, statistics indicate crime in the city began to decline before Giuliani's election. For another, the policemen who made that decline possible were hired when [his predecessor David] Dinkins was mayor. Finally, there is no consensus that the celebrated "broken windows" school of policing that emphasized dealing with minor infractions such as vandalism really was a factor in suppressing major crime rates.

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon took a deeper look as to what motivated Giuliani, paragon of goodness for the dear "Dr.":

He [Giuliani] seemed incapable of grasping that many black New Yorkers felt that he had given police free rein to harass them, beat them and even kill them if it brought the crime rate down another few points. Giuliani may or may not be a racist, but he was raised in an all-white Long Island suburb and plays to primal, almost atavistic big-city fears. The fact that he could be elected not once but twice while totally antagonizing the black population and essentially telling the rest of us that those people were the problem is, as [journalist Wayne] Barrett notes, almost unbelievable.

For my money, the most important political argument in Giuliani Time is that Giuliani's cosmetic reforms had little to do with crime reduction, and a lot to do with making rich and middle-class white people in Manhattan and the brownstone neighborhoods of Brooklyn feel better about the city. Under the previous mayor, David Dinkins, crime had dropped sharply for three years before Giuliani took office in 1994. But Dinkins is a black liberal Democrat, so to this day, many people cling to the superstitious belief (argued vociferously by Giuliani during their '93 campaign) that he hated cops and coddled criminals. In fact, Dinkins had hired thousands of new police and introduced a street-level anti-crime campaign. (Some social scientists will tell you that crime rates are more a function of economic and demographic curves than anything mayors ever do, but that's another story.)

Ah, so it's a race thing. That should play well in Santa Barbara, where it's easy to say gangs are those people's fault, and we sure don't mean the ladies who lunch at the Little Town Club.

And leaving Schlessinger behind, let's not forget how Giuliani's pre-9/11 New York is the post-9/11 U.S. Bush now leads. We are constantly reminded of our primal, almost atavistic fears--if we aren't careful, they will follow us home. They will kill us here.

We have nothing to fear, however, but fear-mongers themselves.