Politics

Giuliani: Let's Focus On The Crisis

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 18, 2001 / 9:54 AM EDT / CBS

In the years he's led New York City as mayor, Rudolph Giuliani has had some mighty highs - credited with improvements fighting crime - and some powerful lows - blamed for police excesses and insensitivity to minority concerns.

Walk on the streets today, and all you'll hear is praise for the mayor, even from those who have loudly denounced him more times than anyone can count.

It's because just about everyone agrees that Rudy, as New York knows him, is doing an inspiring job leading the city in the time of crisis that began early September 11.

Giuliani has been quoting Winston Churchill to help New York get through its darkest hour.

After barely escaping with his own life from a building adjacent to the twin towers, Guiliani calmly informed his fellow New Yorkers that the death toll would be "more than any of us could bear."

He lost personal friends and officiated at funerals; he has worked around the clock, holding news conferences in between visits to the disaster site and meetings to coordinate the response; he has pledged to rebuild and prosper; and he even found time to officiate at a wedding, saying, "This is what life is all about."

Some New Yorkers are even pushing for a term limit law to be changed so that Giuliani, whose term expires in three months, can stay on for a few more years.

Giuliani's new admirers include diehard Democrats who never voted for him, activists who have long lambasted him as insensitive to minorities, and people in other countries who may not have known his name a week ago.

Political consultants say Giuliani could run for anything now and win.

"Ten more years!" shouted a rescue worker Monday as Giuliani toured the site of the World Trade Center disaster.

Asked Monday about the idea of changing the law to stay on the job, Giuliani deflected the acclaim. "What I should do is do the job until Dec. 31, and prepare someone else as the next mayor," he said.

But Tuesday, the mayor declined to reject the idea out of hand. "I don't know the right answer," said Giuliani, in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live." "I think we should get a little further out from the event to see where we are."

For now, he's focusing on the crisis.

"I wish he could stay on and that we didn't have term limits," said Linda Yarwood, a Manhattan paralegal. "I would vote for him again. He is a pillar of strength for our community and our nation."

Rachel Biern, who works as an online researcher, did not support the mayor until now.

"I think he's been amazing under crisis," she said. "He was calm and he kept people together. He was just the right balance of sadness and determination. He really does care about New York."

The mayor ran for Senate from New York last year against Hillary Rodham Clinton but dropped out of the race six months before the election amid revelations that he had prostate cancer and a girlfriend. (He is now in the middle of a nasty divorce.)

Nelson Warfield, a Republican poltical consultant and former press secretary to Bob Dole, predicted that "whoever becomes mayor will beg him to stay on in some role to oversee the rebuilding of the city. But I think Rudy Giuliani goes wherever he wants from here. If he chooses to seek political office, I can't imagine anybody stopping him."

Four Democrats and two Republicans are running for mayor. The primary was supposed to have taken place Sept. 11, the day two hijacked jets crashed into the Trade Center. The primary was rescheduled for Sept. 25.

Former Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who wrote a book about Giuliani called "Nasty Man," said the mayor "over the last eight years has often been petty and insensitive. But there's no question he has risen to the occasion here. The challenge of leading the city when it's under attack, comparable to war, has been met."

Koch suggested that Giuliani be kept on as a reconstruction czar.

"I've never been big on czars," said Giuliani.

On Sunday, Giuliani presided at a promotion ceremony for the Fire Department to fill its leadership ranks after hundreds of firefighters were lost Tuesday.

He quoted Churchill during the ceremony, saying: "Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it's the quality which guarantees all others."

In an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC, Giuliani recommended that people read "about the Battle of Britain and how the people of London lived through the constant daily bombardment by the Nazis. ... They never gave up their spirit, and they figured out how to go about their lives."

Even the Rev. Al Sharpton, a black activist who has persistently accused the mayor of being insensitive to the needs of minorities, admitted Giuliani had "done a good job. I have no criticism."

He was especially impressed that one of the mayor's first announcements to New Yorkers — amid the shock, terror and mourning — was a call for tolerance, given the city's diverse immigrant population and large Muslim community.

"It was a good thing for him to say," Sharpton said. "I was happy to see him set a different tone than he has set in the last eight years."

And David Letterman, the usually acerbic star of CBS' "Late Show," was effusive in his praise for the mayor.

"If you didn't know how to behave, all you had to do at any moment was watch the mayor," he said Monday on his first show since the attack. "Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage."

Randy Mastro, who heads a commission on the City Charter, which bars officials from serving more than two terms, said he has received hundreds of calls and e-mails "asking if there's anything that can be done to see to it that Rudy continues as mayor."

But Mastro said that even as a write-in candidate, Giuliani could not legally serve unless the City Council or the state Legislature changed the term limits law. With Democrats running both bodies, that does not appear likely.

Even overseas, Giuliani has admirers.
"Giuliani is doing a brilliant job and everyone has said that," said Yvonne Hosking, a London secretary. "I find him very compassionate, he really came to the fore."

She said she wouldn't necessarily compare him to Churchill, but added: "I can see a Churchillian attitude."