I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I moonlight as a self-employed, self-publishing political pundit (i.e. I write a lot of letters to people who don’t respond to me). I wrote, for instance, what I’m pretty sure is the only letter the New York Times Book Review has ever received that refers to one of its reviewers (in this case, Leon Wieseltier) as a "sententious cock-gobbler." Shockingly, it wasn’t published.
There was also the letter I wrote t o E! Online which castigated them for devoting too much of their coverage to the shenanigans of Paris Hilton and not nearly enough of their coverage to the shenanigans of David "Becks" Beckham and his wife Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, who, IMHO, shenanigan much more interestingly than Paris.
There’s also this one, which I just shot off to gay Catholic (mildly) conservative British expatriate political pundit Andrew Sullivan, in response to a few recent posts of his on the presidential prospects of former New York City mayor Rudolph "Rudy" Giuliani. Just to give you some context, I’ve been writing to Andrew for years, so if the tone suggests that I actually think he might read what I’m writing, and possibly even respond, then it’s because he’s responded before (and yes, it case you were wondering, it does make me feel all tingly inside).
Dear Andrew,I’m writing to beg you to take a deeper look at Rudy Giuliani — read some more books on him, talk to the better New York-based reporters (including some of his critics) about him — before you accept as a given that, as you write, "The two great advantages Giuliani has are a) national security and b) management skills."
I’m certainly not an expert on Giuliani, but I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing when a public figure’s reputation is more a creation of the media, and an extrapolation from certain isolated moments and events, than it is a result of their actions and character. And Giuliani, I think, has benefitted disproportionately from a) the rebound of New York City during his time in office, and b) his performance in the days after 9/11.
It’s not that he shouldn’t get some points for these things. He should, but they should be apportioned judiciously. A lot of other people were involved in advancing the reforms for which Giuliani now seems to get almost exclusive credit, and he benefited from macroeconomic trends (the stock market rise, for instance) that had little or nothing to do with him. As for his post 9/11 performance, he unquestionably performed well on TV in the days after, and while that counts for something — a lot of politics is performance, after all — it’s not nearly as important as questions like: How well were the city departments he managed prepared to deal with the emergency? How well did he organize the clean-up effort? How effective was he in cooridinating the various constituencies, and state and federal agencies, that tried to help NYC recover? etc.
Also, what are we saying when we say that Giuliani has good national security credentials? Is it that he did well after 9/11? Is it that he was an excellent prosecutor? Is it that crime fell in New York as a result of his policies? Is it that New York is such an international city? Maybe it’s all of those things, but if so, how does that play out? What’s his vision of national security? Does he draw on his experience as a prosecutor as a model for how to go after terrorists? Does he know, from working with the Muslim community in New York, that we can do a much better job of communicating with the Muslim world? Does he understand, from working with cops and lawyers and unions and Al Sharpton, the possibilities and limits of diplomacy?
I haven’t heard you talk about any of those things, so it seems to me, perhaps unfairly, that you’ve adopted the comic book narrative of him, which seems to equate the appearance of being a tough guy with actual toughness as a politician. And that’s not good enough after 6 years of being led by a guy who was good at playing the tough guy but absolutely miserable at actually being one.
What I’m saying is this. You are, deservedly, one of the most influential opinion writers in the country. People listen to you, and they trust your opinion. If you’re going to be saying positive things about Giuliani over the next year and a half, then you owe it to your readers to do your homework, because your opinion is going to matter.
Maybe Rudy Giuliani is strong on national security, and a good manager, and if so than he deserves to be recognized as such. But I haven’t seen the evidence, yet, that you’ve done enough evaluating of him to have arrived at such a place honestly. I know that you’ve been critical of him for his positions on civil liberties and torture, but in a sense those are the less interesting knocks on him. We already know that about him, and the American swing voter, sadly, doesn’t seem to vote against a politician on those grounds.
He’ll lose in the general election, if he makes it there, only if the public has become convinced that he can’t be trusted to run the government competently and/or because he can’t be trusted with our foreign policy. So those are the things about him we need answered.
Personally, I don’t trust him at all, but that’s a visceral feeling, not an educated one. He seems like an overgrown adolescent to me, still nursing resentments from junior high school — when the smug, intellectually incurious jocks and preps got the good looking girls and he was holed up in the library, studying, swearing to himself that one day he’d show them all. I don’t want that guy running my country. He also, like Bush, seems way too hungry for the opportunity to be a man of destiny. It’s not that those kind of people never become great leaders, but they also can become awful leaders, particularly when they’re not very interested in listening to criticism or practicing self-criticism.
If I’m wrong, then I’m happy to be proven wrong, but you haven’t done it yet. And we need you to do it. We can’t afford style over substance anymore.
Best,
Dexter
p.s. You look dashing in navy blue.
