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...then the terrorists have already won.
Check out the look on Joe Torre's and on Giuliani's faces in the photo accompanying the story. Giuliani looks like he's about to wet himself with excitement, and Joe Torre is like, oh, great, this guy again.
Also, can we cut the crap about how Giuliani brought the city back from the brink? Giuliani hired an extremely effective police commissioner, I'll give him that much -- then he forced him out when he was getting the credit he deserved for bringing down crime rates. As for the economy, two words: Bill Clinton. Giuliani, like mayors across the country, benefited from the longest economic expansion in modern history. And New York got an extra boost from the booming stock market in the 1990s.
Look at it this way. The Yankees won four World Series on Rudy's watch. Why not give him credit for that too? The fact is, regarding both the Yankees' and the city's success, Giuliani was in the right place at the right time.
His record on terrorism, meanwhile, was an unqualified disaster, including, among other things, insisting that the city's emergency services center be placed in the WTC -- the only complex that had already been bombed -- against the advice of security experts. Oh, and he appointed his pimp/chauffer Bernie Kerik as police commissioner, and then recommended him as Director of Homeland Security, despite knowing that the guy was mobbed up to the gills. And let's not forget how both he and Bernie used their post-9/11 accommodations as adulterous lovenests.
As for Midwestern guy who claimed that they aren't rubes for falling for Rudy, since we're the ones who elected him: Yes, we're guilty as charged for putting him into office twice. Maybe we can be forgiven for the first time, since Dinkins was a horrendous mayor and even Zippy the Pinhead might have looked good by comparison. His re-election is down to us, though.
Still, we had had grown to hate him before 9/11 -- his approval ratings were such that people were gathering with torches and pitchforks. But anyone who supports him now that the facts are out there -- and more are being uncovered constantly -- is truly a rube.
