Giuliani's "temperament?"

[question everything]

A 'Straight Shooter' or a Temperament Problem?
Newsweek

(snip)

Giuliani gets mostly high marks as mayor—for cutting crime and welfare and for heroic leadership after 9/11. But New Yorkers also remember his thirst for power and bouts of unwarranted nastiness. After 9/11, the mayor briefly weighed challenging the city constitution that barred a third term. "He was hellbent on doing it," says one former aide from this period, who wouldn't be named for fear of retaliation. McCain was among those who talked Giuliani out of it, arguing that he'd be better off going out on top.

Other examples of temperamentally questionable behavior go back more than a decade. After Police Commissioner William Bratton's innovative crime-fighting landed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1994, Giuliani sacked him, apparently for getting too much publicity. When New York Magazine placed ads on buses in 1997 referring to the publication as "Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for," Giuliani leaned on the transit authority to take the ads down. A judge upheld the magazine's free-speech rights.

A critical new documentary, "Giuliani Time," chronicles the mayor's tone-deaf response to local police shootings. For instance, after police killed Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed Haitian-American, in 2000, the mayor improperly released Dorismond's juvenile arrest record, bizarrely said that an earlier argument between Dorismond and his girlfriend might have been a factor in his death and refused to express sympathy to his family. Giuliani later apologized. The same year, he used a press conference to inform his second wife, Donna Hanover, that he wanted a divorce. (She responded with her own announcement that her husband had been having an affair with an aide for "several years.")

A Giuliani campaign spokesperson, Katie Levinson, says his temperament is a plus: "Rudy is a straight shooter." But will a less flattering version of the personality issue be used against him in debates? Says an aide to one rival, insisting on anonymity for himself and his candidate: "You just have to wait and watch."

—Jonathan Alter

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17081159/site/newsweek/

[Ninja Jordan]

1. Giuliani's air-brushed, 3rd wife.

weird.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Been saying this all along...

every chance I get.

Prince Rudy is an arrogant sumbitch and destroys anyone who dares disagree with him. He's even more secretive than Shrub, if you can believe that. Long before 9/11 he turned City Hall and its little park from the open public center it always was into an armed fortress. And he set records for lawsuits against him and the city because he simply refused to let out any information. Even the City Council had to sue him to see the budget.

His reign as US Attorney wasn't nearly as successful as he likes to make it, and was historic more for the leaks, mistrials and fights he got into with other US Attorneys than for any successes in fighting crime.

He was hated by the NYPD for firing good guys like Bratton and bringing in asskissers and yesmen.

He was hated by the Black community for never once sitting down with them but publicly insulting their concerns every chance he got.

A lot of other groups started hating him because he never shrunk from a confrontation, even over the smallest things. I'll never forget The Great Ferret War over some archaic NYC law forbidding ferrets as pets. Nobody knew why this was on the books, but when the City Council was thinking of getting rid of it, Rudy went ballistic over ferrets, ferret owners, and anyone who would even think of owning one. Even people who didn't like ferrets very much thought he was insane.

Far from being the "Hero of 9/11" he was crapping his pants in the new bunker he had built until it was safe to go outside and stand in front of the wreckage taking credit for what the police and firefighters had done.

Several things will likely happen during the primaries:

He will blow his stack at something and people will see him as he is. In a debate, he will likely insult amy opponents.

Vast parts of America will realize he's an Eye-talian from Brooklyn, and that's two strikes agaisnt him. (Bigotry be damned, sometimes it's useful.)

Someone will dig up the Saturday Night Live episodes where he appeared in drag in a few sketches.

[question everything]

4. Rudy Giuliani: Running against Hamlet

chicagotribune.com

Rudy Giuliani: Running against Hamlet
Steve Chapman

February 11, 2007

(snip)

His sterling performance after the attack overshadowed mistakes by his administration that complicated efforts to cope with it. The mayor had insisted, against much expert advice, on putting his emergency command center in the World Trade Center--the city's most obvious terrorist target. On Sept. 11, 2001, when it was most needed, the command center became a useless pile of rubble. The federal commission charged with investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 pointedly faulted the New York Police and Fire Departments for their inability to communicate, a problem long known and ignored. But Rudy somehow eluded blame.

In office, he frequently pressed against the limits of his authority, and then kept going. One instance was his attempt to evict the Brooklyn Museum of Art because he objected to one painting in a temporary exhibit--an action that a federal court ruled unconstitutional. He sued New York magazine for daring to make a joke about him in its ads.

Legendary lawyer Floyd Abrams noted in his book, "Speaking Freely," that "over 35 separate successful lawsuits were brought against the city under Giuliani's stewardship arising out of his insistence on doing the one thing that the 1st Amendment most clearly forbids: using the power of government to restrict or punish speech critical of government itself." Some conservatives didn't mind that he tried to stifle expression he found offensive. But he could also be harsh toward successful businesspeople.

As U.S. attorney in the 1980s, he had two Wall Street brokers arrested and handcuffed at their offices, for maximum public humiliation. But he later had to drop the charges against one of them, and the other pleaded guilty to only a single minor count. Several of the other convictions he got in his Wall Street campaign were thrown out on appeal.

Nominating the pro-choice Giuliani would require Republicans to abandon one of the party's bedrock positions: protecting the unborn. Then there is his embrace of gun control, which conservatives rightly see as an unproductive burden on the law-abiding. But more important than his specific policy positions are Giuliani's inflexible certitude and his recklessness in pursuing any end he deems worthy. As the incumbent president has demonstrated, and Shakespeare confirms, that is a risky temperament for someone in high office. Hamlet met an untimely end, but things didn't turn out so well for King Lear, either.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0702110434feb11,1,523037.column?coll=chi-news-col&ctrack=1&cset=true

[Infomaniac]

3. Rudy has a very nasty, vindictive side

It showed in his years as mayor and when he was the U.S. Attorney. There are tapes of Rudy on radio shows telling callers that he disagreed with that they need to see a psychiatrist. Rudy routinely got testy at press conferences. Ed Koch devoted a whole book to Rudy's nasty side. I think it's called Nasty Man. This will definitely be a campaign issue.