Rudy awakening: as president, Giuliani would grab even more executive power than Bush and Cheney. his mayoralty tells the story

Washington Monthly, Nov, 2007 by Rachel Morris

Giuliani understood that the currency of oversight is information, and he exercised more control over information than any mayor in recent memory. His administration denied information to the public, borough presidents, the city council, and the public advocate. It improperly concealed policy decisions, contract announcements, and routine business. It forced good government organizations to file Freedom of Information requests for data they had once been given as a matter of practice, including such information as the number of working drinking fountains in public parks. Once, the city even denied a Freedom of Information request inquiring how many Freedom of Information requests had been denied.

Reporters had an equally difficult time of it. The Yesrudys could be counted on not to leak to the press, and they enforced a policy of silence among subordinates. Press secretaries at city agencies weren't allowed to answer the most innocuous of questions without checking with City Hall first, including details about the water levels in the city's reservoirs that the municipal Department of Environmental Protection had once provided to the New York Times weather page. The NYPD made it harder for journalists to get basic details about daily crime. Although news organizations repeatedly sued for information and often won, it was expensive to do so, and the information often went out of date. One state judge admonished City Hall that the state's Freedom of Information law "provides for maximum access, not maximum withholding."

THE FINAL DAYS

By 2000, Giuliani had exhausted New Yorkers with his habit of behaving as if he didn't need to observe the same rules as other politicians. Perhaps the epitome of this attitude came on May 10, when he announced at a press conference that he was separating from his second wife, without having informed her first. Two days later (on Mother's Day weekend), he allowed tabloid photographers to snap him and his mistress, Judith, taking a leisurely stroll. That year, his approval ratings fell to 37 percent (although they climbed back up to over 50 percent the following year). Still, his leadership would not have been remembered fondly were it not for the events of September 11, 2001. In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center, Giuliani provided calm and comfort to a wounded city, and the gratitude felt by many New Yorkers erased much of what had gone sour in his mayoralty. It also kicked Giuliani's already abundant sense of exceptionalism into overdrive.

One day in October, near the end of Giuliani's term, Mark Green got a call from a Giuliani aide asking him to meet the mayor at a makeshift command center on the Chelsea piers. Green, who was running for mayor, had no idea why Giuliani wanted to see him. As it turned out, Giuliani wanted to extend his term by three months so that he could finish the recovery work he had started. Would Green endorse the proposal? Green was startled. "I said, 'Well, I'm a lawyer and a historian of sorts, and even Lincoln during the Civil War went ahead with a normally scheduled election in 1864. This does not strike me as a good idea.'"