Eugene Volokh is puzzled by pundit bristling at Rudy Giuliani’s “milking [his] 9/11 reputation for crass political gain.” And I guess I agree: If you were perceived as a strong leader during a time of national crisis, certainly there’s no reason not to advance this as a reason you’re qualified for higher office.
But it does get me wondering: What, exactly, about Rudy’s performance is supposed to make us think he’s especially deserving of higher office? I’m not so much interested here in the broader question of whether he’d make a good president, but why this, in particular, seems to be given such incredible weight. Certainly, there are those who’ve been strongly critical of what you might think would be the most salient aspect of that “performance,” that is, the extent to which the Giuliani administration had prepared the city to deal with a terrorist attract and the competence with which the response was actually orchestrated. But I don’t really even need to wade into the merits of those claims, because this actually doesn’t seem to be what people are talking about at all when they refer to his “performance.” Rather, they seem to half mean it in the theatrical sense of the word: the image of a strong, calm leader he projected to the city and the nation.
Now, I was in Manhattan on 9/11, and I vaguely recall some of this, remember thinking he did a good job. I’m sure it would’ve been worse if he’d gone on TV and begun hollering: “We’re all going to DIE! Flee, flee NOW!” But at the end of the day, on the long list of things vying for my brainspace that week, Rudy’s personal gravitas ranked low. Maybe this kind of thing seems more important after six and a half years of a president who seems improbably unacquainted with his ostensible native tongue, and whose face seems perpetually frozen in the expression of a sniggering teenager waiting for you to realize he’s Saran-Wrapped your toilet bowl. But Bush is, as in so many other things, aberrant here. Within the normal range of competence—which is where all the major contenders appear to be—marginal differences in ability to do a passable Robert Young impression just don’t seem especially important—nowhere near important enough, at any rate, to hang an entire campaign on.
It’s perfectly understandable, of course: We know that the vast majority of an executive’s job—the most important part—happens offscreen, but that (naturally) makes it hard to evaluate well. What we all see is not so much the actual leadership, but the president playing leader on teevee in the wake of major tragedies, so we use that at as a proxy.
Or, at any rate, so I hope. The more terrifying possibility is that this kind of therapeutic speechifying is, in itself, a core component of what we want from a president—that grown American men and women need their elected political leaders to make them feel OK about sad or scary events. That would signal a truly depressing level of national infantilization.
Update: Commenter “Reality Man” observes:
The whole reason Giuliani was on TV so much was that his terrorism war room was in the WTC even though people had been telling him for years to put it underground in Brooklyn. If he had been smart and done that, he wouldn’t have been on TV so much and wouldn’t have been annointed hero of 9/11.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Jacob T. Levy // Apr 30, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Either the proxy story or the therapeutic story fits. I wouldn’t be *quite* so dismissive of the speech for its own sake– the ability to provide effective leadership/ inspiration/ solace simply through words has been a basic characteristic of good democratic leadership since Pericles, so there’s probably something to it, and undemocratic charismatic leaders are sometimes happy to step in where democratic leaders fail to be charismatic. At the end of the day I’m a wonk and care incomparably more about the actual work that gets done– but the speechifying does legitimately matter in its own right.
Part of the 9/11 effect– and I think this was especially true for those of us outside New York/ Washington, experiencing everything only as mediated by TV– was that Giuliani was on the air so much sooner, more often, and more confidently than Bush himself. It looked as if he had the capacity to spontaneously rise to the occasion– performing, sure, but doing so without the trappings of mere performance. And he didn’t act as grief-counselor-in-chief– he said very little that was ‘therapeutic’ in that hand-holding sense. So between [seeming to] effectively run the emergency response in NYC and [seeming to] be able to say appropriate words quickly, just relying on his own judgment, he created a pretty powerful effect.
Doesn’t mean he’d make a good president, and it owuld astonish me if all of that could elect a guy who’s never held office higher than mayor and hasn’t held any officefor six years. But he did a lot better than just not-panic, and in circumstances that seemed to suggest he was doing something more than just acting.
2 tom // Apr 30, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I’ve never really understood the rep Giuliani got for his performance around 9/11, either. Of course, I wasn’t in New York, so presumably I saw less of his supposedly heroic oratory than you did — just what was carried by the national media. Still, it seemed like journalists were primed to anoint heroes as quickly as possible, and Rudy got sucked into that phenomenon — as did the President and Bernie Kerik, although Giuliani’s the only one who hasn’t managed to nationally disgrace himself since then.
The nation’s first responders did too, of course, and more deservedly so. But since their storyline was basically one of martyrdom, all that could be done was to refer to them anonymously and make shitty movies in their honor. For individual glorification the press had to turn to the politicians, and I guess it didn’t really matter which ones were at hand.
3 joeo // Apr 30, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Jacob T. Levy is right. There was something to what Giuliani did. I don’t think every competent politician could have done it. Authoritarianism comes across well in a crises.
It doesn’t mean Giuliani would be a good president. He wouldn’t.
4 Reality Man // May 1, 2007 at 1:44 pm
The whole reason Giuliani was on TV so much was that his terrorism war room was in the WTC even though people had been telling him for years to put it underground in Brooklyn. If he had been smart and done that, he wouldn’t have been on TV so much and wouldn’t have been annointed hero of 9/11.
5 Tom // May 1, 2007 at 5:50 pm
How would his disaster handling skills compare with, say, those of the leaders of New Orleans?
6 Karol // May 4, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I was in New York and I remember that most people just wanted to hide under their beds. We had no idea where the president was and Rudy just seemed fearless, out there by the towers, telling us that this is awful but that we’re going to be alright. It wasn’t his “performance”, exactly, it was his attitude. It helped us not freak out.
7 Jon H // May 7, 2007 at 1:10 pm
“How would his disaster handling skills compare with, say, those of the leaders of New Orleans?”
Just how well do you think Rudy would have handled it if much of the 5 boroughs was under water?
As bad as 9/11 was, the damage was highly localized to a small part of Manhattan, and people who lived anywhere but right near the WTC retained access to necessities of life.