NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 2007
The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He's Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way
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Republican Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani greets his supporters before a town hall meeting Monday, Nov. 12, 2007 in St. Charles, Mo. (AP)
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For better or worse, Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is tied in the public imagination to one day: Sept. 11, 2001. But for a more complete picture of the Republican presidential hopeful - and some insight into what kind of president he might be - it's helpful to look at his life and leadership before he was thrust onto the national stage.
Giuliani first rose to prominence as a prosecutor, one known for his exceptional self-confidence - his detractors might say arrogance - and his willingness to take on high-profile cases, including those involving Wall Street and the mafia.
"He was big going against organized crime, and I knew that took a lot of courage," says former U.S. Rep. and Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari, the New York co-chair for Giuliani's presidential campaign. "As an Italian-American, I was pleased to see a man who was an Italian-American taking on the mob."
Giuliani's first run for New York City mayor, in 1989, was a failure, but he was elected four years later on the strength of a vow to clean up a crime-ridden city. The Brooklyn-born lawyer brought his prosecutorial nature with him to City Hall.
"He's a confrontational guy, and he's a combative guy," says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, who covered Giuliani and City Hall for the New York Times and Newsday. "All of them squabbled with reporters, but he was more that way than any of the others. He wanted to do it all, and he wanted to do it his way."
The list of those whom Giuliani clashed with as mayor is long, and it includes the black community, city bureaucrats, and labor unions. His anti-crime plan, instituted by Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton, centered on a crackdown on the minor offenses such as graffiti and aggressive panhandling. When crime rates dropped Giuliani claimed credit, and his approval ratings soared. He won his 1997 reelection bid overwhelmingly.
But the steamroller mentality that had served Giuliani well in the first term had begun to catch up with him. Bratton, whom had been hailed by Time Magazine as the reason "we're winning the war against crime," had been forced out amid personal clashes with the mayor, who had reportedly become jealous of the commissioner's celebrity.
And Giuliani's handling of the sexual assault by police of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, as well as the shooting of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo by plain-clothed officers, exacerbated simmering resentment of the mayor on the part of the city's minority population. Protests over police brutality raged for weeks, with Giuliani's predecessor David Dinkins, Congressmen Charlie Rangel, Rev. Jesse Jackson among the protestors.
Giuliani was by this point a solidly polarizing figure, loved by some New Yorkers for cleaning up the city and loathed by those troubled by his tactics. Fred Siegel, author of Giuliani bio "The Prince of the City" and a former Giuliani advisor, attributes lingering disapproval of Giuliani to the mayor's refusal to see issues such as crime and welfare as the result of social or economic circumstance.
"Giuliani succeeded by trampling on the most cherished illusions of liberal New Yorkers," he says. "What Giuliani did was not just succeed, he succeeded at the price of people's illusions, and they'd very much like to have them back."
In the spring of 2000, Giuliani's political career was seemingly transformed by two revelations: That he had prostate cancer, and that he was separating from wife Donna Hanover. Giuliani's handling of the latter raised hackles: He announced the separation to the press before he told his wife, and he allowed himself to be seen, and photographed, with the woman he would later marry, Judith Nathan.
Giuliani had been running against Clinton for a Senate seat, but he soon dropped out of the race. With his approval rating low and New Yorkers gossiping about his personal life, political insiders began to view Giuliani as an albatross. "The sooner we get rid of the guy the better," a prominent Republican told the New York Times' Bob Herbert.
By Brian Montopoli
©MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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- RON PAUL WILL RESTORE U.S. SOVEREIGNTY
All of the trade deals and world government organizations, which all of the presidential candidates support (except Ron Paul), such as the ICC, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA, are all a major threat to our nation''s sovereignty. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites. The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a prescription to take herbs and vitamins. The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws to meet their needs, and not our own. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs. The NAFTA superhighway, being built by a Spanish company, is just one part of a plan to erase our borders and create the North American Union, a single nation State like the EU, out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new, unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under the NAU scheme. There won''t be any borders anymore, or a free America. Our limited, constitutional government will be gone forever. Let''s not forget the UN either. It wants to impose a direct Carbon Tax on us. Ron Paul successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to rule over us, we need someone in the White House who knows how to say "No." We must withdraw from any organizations or treaty that infringes upon our nation''s sovereignty. - Reply to this comment
- RON PAUL IS NOT YOUR FATHER''S REPUBLICAN
Ron Paul represents a different Republican Party from the one that Iraq, deficits and corruption have soured the country on. It''s ironic that other GOP candidates are scared to death of his message, because his positions are more conservative than theirs. Being anti-war; pro-life; pro civil liberties; pro Second Amendment; pro States rights; pro secure borders; and in favor of a sound economics policy IS TOTALLY CONSERVATIVE. The Republican party has "lost its way," Paul said during a recent GOP debate. Like the limited federal government principles espoused by Dwight D. Eisenhower, his school of Republicanism stands for a certain idea of The Constitution that much of the power asserted by modern Presidents has been usurped from Congress, and that much of the power asserted by Congress has been usurped from the States. Though Paul acknowledges flaws in both The Constitution (it included slavery) and The Bill of Rights (it doesn''t go far enough), he still thinks a comprehensive array of positions can be drawn therefrom: against gun control; for the sovereignty of States; and against foreign-policy adventures like the ones currently being played-out in the Mid-East. After ten terms of service as a U.S. Congressman, Ron Paul has demonstrated a consistent track record of adherance to The Constitution unmatched by anyone in either party. Ron Paul does not represent your Father''s school of political thought. He represents your Founding Fathers. - Reply to this comment
- WERE HAVING A TEA PARTY! YOU''RE INVITED
As we all know, freedom isn''t free in this country. Therefore, in the wake of our successful fundraising event of November 5th, in which we all came together to raise $4.2 million dollars for Ron Paul''s campaign, we''ve set yet another date for an even bigger fundraiser. This one will take place during on December 16th: a very important date for people who love freedom and hate tyranny to ring the Liberty Bell, and let our sold-out, globalist, political ****** and their mainstream media enablers know that good Americans are mad as hell, and that we''re not going to take it anymore. December 16th is the 224th aniversary of The Boston Tea Party: an act of protest by the American colonists against the tyranny of Great Britain where the Sons of Liberty boarded British ships and dumped crates of tea overboard into Boston Harbor. It was a key event which helped to spark the American Revolution, and we hope this event will, likewise, add additional spark to our own 21st Century political revolution to restore peace, prosperity and freedom to our Republic by helping elect a President whose record of adherance to The Constitution is unmatched by anyone in American politics. Please join us this December 16th for the largest one-day political donation event in history. Our goal is to bring together 100,000 people to donate $100 each, creating a one day donation total of $10,000,000. The time to act is now. The time for Ron Paul is NOW! TeaParty07.com - Reply to this comment
- HEAR THE WISDOM OF OUR FATHERS
"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must...undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine
"if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom."
- Samual Adams
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
- James Madison
"Those that give give up essential liberties for temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
- Abraham Lincoln
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and those who would exploit our fear for power and their own personal, selfish, cynical gain."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"When the people fear their government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Commerce with all nations. Alliances with none."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to handle conflict through peaceful means."
- Ronald Reagan
"Wars are poor chisels for carving-out peaceful tomorrows."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"Ron Paul doesn''t represent your Father''s school of political thought. He represents your Founding Fathers."
- Me - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
- CBS News: ''The Evolution Of Rudy Giuliani
He''s Gone From Prosecutor To Mayor To Icon To Candidate, Fortunes Rising And Falling Along The Way''
-The Evolution of George Walker H Bush: He''s gone from A Monkey Chimp to a G-Walking-Liar President.
-The Evolution of Ron Paul and his Unethical Campaigners: They''re gone from from Nuts to Idiots! - Reply to this comment
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