Checking Rudy

In 1996, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, appointed Jerome M. Hauer, left,
to lead the Office of Emergency Management.

It would not have hurt my feelings any if Julie-Annie would have had the nomination secured and then the deluge had started.

But alas, that was not meant to be. He is instead being bitten in the ass by his phony terrorism record at this early date.

And ask any first responder anywhere in the country – Rudy is a f*#king joke on the terror-fighter front. He had a couple of bullhorn moments while the country was in shock, but really, that’s all he has. Behind the rhetoric he is just a torture-lovin’ coward.

The most significant criticisms leveled at him come from his former head of Emergency Management, Jerome Hauer:

In recent days, Mr. Hauer has challenged Mr. Giuliani’s recollection that he had little role as mayor in placing the city’s emergency command center at the ill-fated World Trade Center.

Mr. Hauer has also disputed the claim by the Giuliani campaign that the mayor’s wife, Judith Giuliani, had coordinated a help center for families after the attack.

And he has contradicted Mr. Giuliani’s assertions that the city’s emergency response was well coordinated that day, a point he made most notably to the authors of “Grand Illusion,” a book that depicts Mr. Giuliani’s antiterrorism efforts as deeply flawed.

Mr. Hauer was one of the closest advisors Mr. Guilliani had in his inner coterie. He served in the Guilliani administration for four years, and emerged as one of the best-known emergency preparedness experts in the field, and has been a frequent guest on television news shows and discussion panels.

When Mr. Hauer criticizes, it isn’t dismissed as the rantings of a contrarian crank, it is instead taken seriously. Or should be.

But wait…there’s more…

The part of the Times piece I found particularly disturbing was the bit toward the end that put me in the mind of Bubble Boy and his Craven Cabal:

Fred Siegel, the author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life” (Encounter Books, 2005), said the trust that members of Mr. Giuliani’s inner circle invested in each other was the reason no one apart from Mr. Hauer had ever emerged as even an occasional critic.

“The core of the administration was that these guys would always pull together,” said Mr. Siegel, who once served as speechwriter for Mr. Giuliani. “Once a decision was made, that was it. There wouldn’t be any second-guessing.”

Do we really need four more years of administration-comes-first-and-the-country-can-go-to-hell?

I don’t think so. We are going to be lucky to emerge from the Bush maladministration with our nation intact. If a smarter, more authoritarian version of Bush emerges from the 2008 pack to become president, we may as well call the time of death for the American experiment.