National Review and Giuliani down by the schoolyard (a true story)

I'm having a hard time believing that an article in NR could encapsulate my feelings about a politician, but David Freddoso has Rudy Giuliani's number:

Yes, that’s right. Most Americans love Rudy, but it’s not just because they don’t know where he stands on issues. It’s also because they know nothing of his pre-9/11 self, and the more they learn, the less attractive they will probably find him.

[...]

Few of those admiring America’s Mayor from afar remember the real mayor who became so jealous of the media attention given to Bill Bratton — his own police commissioner and the brains behind much of his crime-reduction strategy — that he drove the man out of office. Iowa voters have never heard about the Rudy who could walk into a town-hall meeting in The Bronx and shout down a boorish but pitiful female questioner (she rambled on that she had been unjustly evicted, as Esquire Magazine described it in 1997) with an over-the-top response like, “I’m glad we didn’t help you.”

Those who lived in New York prior to 9/11, myself included, remember an excellent mayor who was obsessed with getting credit for everything and making his critics pay; an effective mayor who called rivals “jerks” and “morons;” a decisive mayor who knowingly set out to drag his 14- and 10-year-old children through one of the nastiest and most publicized divorces in history. They remember a ruthless mayor who responded to the accidental police shooting of Patrick Dorismond in 2000 not just by defending the cops (as a good mayor must), but by illegally releasing the victim’s sealed juvenile rap sheet and declaring on television that the deceased “isn’t an altar boy.”

The people who remember him from 9/11 (when he was down in the thick of Ground Zero because he was dumb enough to put his emergency command center next to the two tallest buildings in the city) don't know about the Giuliani of the local news, always angry and completely unable to work with stakeholders. NYT columnist Bob Herbert quotes former Mayor Ed Koch, circa 1999 (no link because it's so old):

Mr. Giuliani's modus operandi, said Mr. Koch, is to "dehumanize and demonize" his opponents. "If you are a critic, you are not just a critic, you're a threat to the world. You've gotta be destroyed. Go for the jugular is what he does on every occasion. So taxi drivers whose livelihood is involved -- whether you agree with them or disagree with them, they want to be heard -- they become taxi terrorists. Food vendors become poisonous."

When the Mayor's opponents want to exercise their right to peacefully protest his policies, they frequently are stymied. "He doesn't allow for any difference of opinion," said Mr. Koch. "When he bars the different groups that want permits, they have to go to court. They win every time. But nevertheless, it means you have to hire lawyers. Not everybody has that true grit that will take you all the way to the end."

Keep in mind that Giuliani never ran against Koch and that Koch ran to the right of his Democratic opponents when he first won the mayoralty in 1977. These guys aren't enemies, but Koch knows a jerk when he sees one.