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Lindsey
December 21st, 2006, 04:27 PM
"And on this decision I'm gonna follow through
Whatever way the wind blows I'll be round I'll be round for you"

Theme song for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/011647.php)?

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
December 21st, 2006, 08:44 PM
"And on this decision I'm gonna follow through
Whatever way the wind blows I'll be round I'll be round for you"

Theme song for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/011647.php)?ROFL!

Fact is, I didn't like Giuliani as mayor for one minute, until September 11th. Then I thought he was the leader the city needed. That doesn't necessarily translate into the leader the country needed, then or now. But he certainly was what we all in this local area needed as a leader then.

Lindsey
December 21st, 2006, 10:35 PM
Fact is, I didn't like Giuliani as mayor for one minute, until September 11th. Then I thought he was the leader the city needed. That doesn't necessarily translate into the leader the country needed, then or now. But he certainly was what we all in this local area needed as a leader then.
Yes, I'll definitely give him that: in the immediate aftermath, he was definitely the leader the city, and even the nation, needed. But once the immediate crisis had passed, his leadership was far from perfect. The health of the workers at Ground Zero, for example:

There was actually a National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health study in early October 2001 that said, yes, there was a problem [with the air quality around Ground Zero], that most of the workers at Ground Zero were not being properly protected, but that the City of New York, as incident commander -- see, the problem was that for a long time in the first days after 9/11, the site was being treated as an emergency rescue operation, and therefore, the City of New York, the Fire Department and Mayor Giuliani were in charge.

Once it became clear that no survivors were left, which only took a few days, at that point, it really became a recovery operation, and the federal government should have stepped in. However, Giuliani insisted on maintaining control of the site. And the government, the federal safety officials, did not dare to challenge him. As a result, nobody was making sure that the workers were protected.

--Juan Gonzalez, speaking (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/08/1349248&mode=thread&tid=25) on Democracy Now!, 8 Sep 2006 (Gonzalez writes for the New York Daily News, which has been pursuing the story about air quality in lower Manhattan in the period immediately after the attack on the WTC towers)
As Gonzalez points out, there is plenty of blame to go around, and the federal government had the legal authority to step in and failed to exercise it; but Giuliani and the City of New York are not blameless.

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
December 22nd, 2006, 11:42 PM
Yes, I'll definitely give him that: in the immediate aftermath, he was definitely the leader the city, and even the nation, needed. But once the immediate crisis had passed, his leadership was far from perfect.His leadership as mayor generally was really lacking. It was literally only in that moment of crisis that he rose to the occasion. The rest of the time, before and after... no.

Lindsey
December 24th, 2006, 12:57 AM
His leadership as mayor generally was really lacking. It was literally only in that moment of crisis that he rose to the occasion. The rest of the time, before and after... no.
For certain he was the man of the hour on 9/11. It was Giuliani, and not Bush, that the nation looked to for comfort and strength that day. It took Bush quite a bit more time to find his footing.

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
December 24th, 2006, 10:59 PM
For certain he was the man of the hour on 9/11. It was Giuliani, and not Bush, that the nation looked to for comfort and strength that day. It took Bush quite a bit more time to find his footing.Personally, I'm not convinced he ever found his footing.

Lindsey
December 28th, 2006, 12:17 AM
Personally, I'm not convinced he ever found his footing.
<sigh> Yeah. He managed to fake it convincingly enough for long enough to win a second term, but the whole house of cards started coming down after the 2004 re-election.

Josh Marshall tossed out a question on his blog the other day: "What was the tipping point for Bush that led inevitably to the 'thumping' of the Republicans this past November?" Most people (including me) said "Katrina." But I thought the most intriguing answer was "the 2004 election." The person offering it explained that the scorched-earth strategy the Republicans followed to gain victory in that election left them no political assets with which to govern afterward -- they had thrown all of the household furniture into the fire just to make it across the finish line. And it's true, the slide downhill started almost immediately after the election, when Bush decided to spend political capital he didn't have to "reform" Social Security. (Not for nothing do they call that the third rail of politics. Smarty-boy thought he knew better. Ooops.)

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
December 28th, 2006, 10:16 PM
Josh Marshall tossed out a question on his blog the other day: "What was the tipping point for Bush that led inevitably to the 'thumping' of the Republicans this past November?" Most people (including me) said "Katrina." But I thought the most intriguing answer was "the 2004 election." The person offering it explained that the scorched-earth strategy the Republicans followed to gain victory in that election left them no political assets with which to govern afterward -- they had thrown all of the household furniture into the fire just to make it across the finish line. And it's true, the slide downhill started almost immediately after the election, when Bush decided to spend political capital he didn't have to "reform" Social Security. (Not for nothing do they call that the third rail of politics. Smarty-boy thought he knew better. Ooops.)I think the real problem is the total disconnect between a scorched earth "win at all costs" policy and then morphing relatively narrow and narrowly-based victories into "a popular mandate" creating "political capital". The guy is even more out of tune with reality than I ever dreamed (or feared) he might be.

ktinkel
December 29th, 2006, 08:53 AM
The guy is even more out of tune with reality than I ever dreamed (or feared) he might be.Do you think he is genuinely out of tune with reality or a subscriber to the “big lie” technique of governing?

I am leaning toward the latter.

Dan in Saint Louis
December 29th, 2006, 09:23 AM
Do you think he is genuinely out of tune with reality
Most everybody inside the Beltline is out of touch with reality. Senators who live there (instead of in their home state) don't even know what their own constituents want, and the higher in the power structure one climbs the worse it gets.

ktinkel
December 29th, 2006, 07:45 PM
Most everybody inside the Beltline is out of touch with reality. Senators who live there (instead of in their home state) don't even know what their own constituents want, and the higher in the power structure one climbs the worse it gets.Perhaps. But that is a cop-out for all of them.

But who knows? Not me.

Lindsey
December 29th, 2006, 11:59 PM
I think the real problem is the total disconnect between a scorched earth "win at all costs" policy and then morphing relatively narrow and narrowly-based victories into "a popular mandate" creating "political capital".
Agreed. 100%. And that the political capital they claimed from that sort of narrow victory was nothing more than an illusion was made abundantly clear by the failed campaign to privatize Social Security. There was no political mandate for that, and no political capital to expend to put any such program through Congress.

--Lindsey

Lindsey
December 30th, 2006, 12:02 AM
Do you think he is genuinely out of tune with reality or a subscriber to the “big lie” technique of governing?
I'm inclined to think that their problem is that they bought into their own spin. They deceived themselves even more than they deceived the rest of us.

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
December 30th, 2006, 01:47 PM
Do you think he is genuinely out of tune with reality or a subscriber to the “big lie” technique of governing? I am leaning toward the latter.I tend to lean toward the former insofar as Bush himself is concerned. Recently Gerhard Schroeder, former chancellor of West Germany, said in an autobiography that, in one of his first meetings with Bush, Bush basically took the line that he was "on a mission from God" (to quote the Blues Brothers). Anybody who believes that is genuinely out of tune with reality.

OTOH, I think he surrounded himself with those -- like Cheney and Rumsfeld and others -- who are in the "big lie" category, big time.

Judy G. Russell
December 30th, 2006, 01:50 PM
Most everybody inside the Beltline is out of touch with reality. Senators who live there (instead of in their home state) don't even know what their own constituents want, and the higher in the power structure one climbs the worse it gets.It's certainly true that the world inside the Beltway (for lurkers: the circular highway that runs around Washington DC in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs) is out of touch with the rest of the world. I remember living there during Watergate and being astounded that friends from other parts of the country weren't following every event as avidly as all of my friends from the Beltway zone were.

BUT... that doesn't explain a President who thinks that Iraq is still a good thing to have done, that Brownie was doing a heck of a job, that the line between church and state should be blurred (or erased)...

ktinkel
December 30th, 2006, 02:42 PM
Bush basically took the line that he was "on a mission from God" (to quote the Blues Brothers). Anybody who believes that is genuinely out of tune with reality.

OTOH, I think he surrounded himself with those -- like Cheney and Rumsfeld and others -- who are in the "big lie" category, big time.I am still not sure about Bush — and think he is fully capable of claiming an alliance with God if he thought it would secure his base.

About Rummy and Cheney, though, no question. Cynical liars through and through.

Dan in Saint Louis
December 30th, 2006, 05:45 PM
that doesn't explain a President who thinks that Iraq is still a good thing to have done, that Brownie was doing a heck of a job, that the line between church and state should be blurred (or erased)...
Maybe I can get some of what he's smoking...

Judy G. Russell
December 31st, 2006, 08:29 PM
Maybe I can get some of what he's smoking...He'd surely have his Justice Department prosecute you if you did...

Judy G. Russell
December 31st, 2006, 08:31 PM
I am still not sure about Bush — and think he is fully capable of claiming an alliance with God if he thought it would secure his base.I'm not sure either, but my guess is that he really believes it. (Or, as Lindsey suggests, has convinced himself of it.)

About Rummy and Cheney, though, no question. Cynical liars through and through.Oh yeah. No question there at all.