‘If somebody can tell me what he did on 9/11 that was so good, I’d love to hear it’

May 30, 2007

These paragraphs, from an article in The Politico yesterday, are so common they barely register anymore.

Giuliani has tried to appeal to social conservatives, embracing their agenda by pledging to appoint “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court, using Justices John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. as examples. Conservatives expect “strict constructionists” to determine that the Constitution does not mandate abortion rights.

But, like Dwight Eisenhower’s in 1952, Giuliani’s national security stature after the Sept. 11 attacks more likely explains his continued popularity within the religious right, whose voters have long held hawkish positions on the issue. (emphasis added)

Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Giuliani was mayor of New York on 9/11. Eisenhower’s national security stature was earned by defeating the Nazis and helping save the world. Giuliani’s national security stature is a media creation, bolstered by clever public relations. To put the two in the same sentence is comical.

And yet, this kind of implicit praise for Giuliani has taken root. NBC’s Chuck Todd has repeatedly claimed that Giuliani “owns 9/11.” The WSJ’s John Harwood said Giuliani can claim “combat” experience. The NYT uncritically characterizes Giuliani as the “commanding daddy.” The WaPo asserted as fact that Giuliani’s critics couldn’t possibly go after him “on national security” in the campaign. NBC’s David Gregory reported, “To many, 9/11 made Giuliani a hero.”

And all of these examples are just from the last three weeks. The further back we go, the more examples we find.

If ever there was a media myth in need of scrutiny, this is it.

We’ve been over this several times, but Greg Sargent’s summary describes the dynamic nicely.

What Rudy does have is an aura of national security experience — that is, the appearance of having it, or something like it, anyway — based on the fact that he happened to be Mayor of New York on 9/11. One gains “stature” in a given field when they have actual experience in it. Even if you agree that Rudy’s post 9/11 leadership was admirable, it simply doesn’t constitute an achievement in the field of national security. Rudy’s aura of national security experience is a media creation, nothing more, helped along by silly passages like this one in The Politico.

We wouldn’t be stamping our feet about this if it didn’t make a larger point with far-reaching implications for the Presidential race: If the media, and Rudy’s political rivals, cede Rudy the aura of national security experience based on nothing other than his performance on 9/11, he stands a much better chance of becoming President. Descriptions of the candidates matter.

We are starting to see more pushback, not from reporters who buy into the myth, but from those who know better.

“We have all the UFA, the UFOA, and the fire members are all behind us — the International Association of Fire Fighters,” said [Jim Riches, a deputy chief with the fire department whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks]. “And we’re going to be out there today to let everybody know that he’s not the hero that he says he is.”

The group’s complaints center on the faulty radios used by the fire department that day and what they say was a lack of coordination at Ground Zero.

And Riches disputes the notion that Giuliani provided any form of leadership on September 11 or in the days following.

“If somebody can tell me what he did on 9/11 that was so good, I’d love to hear it. All he did was give information on the TV”

“He did nothing,” Riches continued. “He stood there with a TV reporter and told everyone what was going on. And he got it from everybody else down at the site.”

Media Matters adds some additional points to remember:

* On the May 1 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, HBO host Bill Maher said that “[a]ll of the experts told him [Giuliani] to move the command-and-control center out of the World Trade Center. He put it in the World Trade Center.” Maher added: “He’s not a terrorism fighter. He has no credentials in this.”

* In their book, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 (HarperCollins, August 2006), Wayne Barrett and CBSNews.com senior producer Dan Collins cited several of what they presented as Giuliani’s security-related failures, as Media Matters noted, including “the lack of interoperable radios” between the New York fire and police departments, which they wrote “became … a focus of fury” (Page 343). On 9-11, the New York City fire department was using outdated VHF radios that were incompatible with the police department’s UHF radios.

* A March 14 New York Times article reported that Harold A. Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said, “The whole issue of the radios is unforgivable. … Everyone knew they needed a better system, and he [Giuliani] didn’t get it done.”

I’d only add that when it comes to policy matters, Giuliani also has no idea what he’s talking about.

Note to political reporters: please stop repeating the myth. It’s not true.

9/11 was Giuliani’s Katrina.

  • The same disinformation machine–the Republican-controlled media juggernaut–that propped up Bush as a ‘uniter’ and a ‘compassionate conservative’ has apparently decided to focus its noise in support of Giuliani.

    It will be interesting to see if the same people who voted for Bush in 2000, based largely on this media machine, would vote for Giuliani in 2008. Surely, the 28-percenters will, but will anyone else? The answer to that question will help to decide whether or not the nation’s populace have learned their lesson, and can emerge from the snake oil salesmen’s smokescreen and vote for responsible, qualified people instead of puppets controlled by the 1-percenters.

  • 9/11 made Rudy look credible because he was standing beside Bush. It’s a no lose comparison. Had Donald Duck been mayor of NY on that day, the media would be heaping their praise on him instead.

  • I feel like I’m the contrarian poster on this website.

    But sometimes it seems that the most important thing on this site is to attack Republicans, not necessarily be honest.

    I was living in NY during the time when the towers burned and fell. I watched it happen from my fire escape in Brooklyn. Guiliani was in fact a comfort. He looked pained (at least on the one channel I could receive on tv), he also looked determined. I didn’t vote for him for mayor and never would – he personified corruption. But I do give him credit for saying the right things the right way during that time period.

    Two weeks later he returned to being the Rudy I knew and despised again.

    To deny him those two weeks of being a “good leader” is just as short sighted as to deny his years of corruption and heavy handedness. There is a reason New Yorkers prefer Bloomberg over Guiliani.

  • I’ve written previously that I think Giuliani’s performance on 9/11 was defendable. He said the right things on that terrible day, and that meant something.

    The idea however that he can be labelled the hero of 9/11 is absurd. He is no more the hero of 9/11 than Clinton was the hero of the Oklahoma bombing or the Columbine shooting. But the reason Rudi runs on this faux heroic platform is because he has nothing else to offer the base and he’ll be mega-screwed if this firefighter campaign lands its punches.

  • Roodee?

    T V Hero (A butchery of Foreigner’s Juke Box Hero)
    Showing on the tele, with his head up high
    Couldnt get to the HQ, it was in the WTC
    Heard the cries of the dead, he could picture the scene
    Put his back to the flag, then like his constant dream

    He led one disaster, just blew him away
    He saw POTUS in his eyes, and the very next day
    Stated a consultant gig with some dirty pals
    Didnt know foreign policy, but he knew for sure

    That one disaster, felt good to his dreams
    Didnt take long, to understand
    Just one disaster, spun just right so
    Was one way ticket, only one way to go

    So he started spinin
    Aint never gonna stop
    Gotta keep on spinin
    Someday he tries to make it to the top

    And be a T V hero, got stars in his eyes
    Hes a T V hero
    He took one disaster, T V hero, stars in his eyes
    T V hero, fame come alive tonight

    In a campaign without end, in a densely open field
    Thought he passed his own shadow, by the White House door
    Like a trip through the past, to that day of terror
    And that one disaster made his whole life change

    Now he needs to keep spinin
    He just cant stop
    Gotta keep on spinin
    That boy has got to stay on top

    And be a T V hero, got stars in his eyes
    Hes a T V hero, got stars in his eyes
    Yeah, T V hero, got stars in his eyes
    With that one disaster dream come alive
    Come alive tonight

    Yeah, hes gotta keep spinin
    He just cant stop
    Gotta keep on spinin
    That boy has got to stay on top

    And be a T V hero, got stars in his eyes
    Hes a T V hero, got stars in his eyes
    Just one disaster, put ambition in his eyes
    Hes just a T V hero, aah aah aah
    T V hero, T V hero, hes got stars in his eyes
    Stars in his eyes

  • It’s hard enough to make decisions about candidates without having to sift through what the media “reports” in order to determine what the media’s agenda is for how they choose to report on and portray them. I should be asking questions about why this candidate wants to do this, and that candidate wants to do something else – I should not have to keep asking why this talking head or that network is choosing to ignore the facts and failing to tell the whole story.

    As a “middle man,” the media has become more dangerous than helpful, which is why people should stop using it as a filter. Hear the candidate yourself, read his or her writings yourself (and not in little snippets and excerpts in newspapers and magazines). See them in person if you can.

  • I didn’t see the towers fall. Luckily, another building blocked my view. I don’t think I could have survived seeing the towers fall.

    I hate Giuliani and I hat Bush too.

    However, I really do remember commenting in mid September that the Mayor was doing a good job of leading people and that Bush was doing a terrible job of leading people.

    I can’t tell you exactly what he did but I got the feeling that Giuliani was making the necessary decisions while Bush was passing the buck.

    Looking back, maybe what I respected was the fact that Giuliani was willing to take charge while Bush was making excuses about phantom threats to Air Force One.

    I have no doubt that if I needed a leader in a crisis I would pick Giuliani over Bush any day. Of course, I think my dead cat might be a better leader in a crisis so that isn’t too much of a compliment

  • One approach to counter this stuff is “Rudy Guiliani made good speeches after 9/11. George Bush made good speeches after 9/11. See where that’s gotten us!”

  • Giuliani’s claims to national security or foreign policy creds may be hollow, but I think it’s disingenous to say he didn’t provide leadership in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

    A big part of leadership in a crisis is PR: getting information to the public, showing empathy while projecting and encouraging strength in others is critical. Giuliani did that extremely well, as I recall. While Dubya cowered and fumbled and tried to figure out how to respond, Rudy looked like a leader. And he was. I remember wondering why Bush couldn’t get his public act together when Giuliani was writing him a script.

    Of course, actually doing something is the less visible side of leadership and there, he didn’t fare so well. Given the magnitude of the event, I’m not sure who would have done better, but nonetheless, an awful lot of mistakes were made.

    I’m sure that many remain so impressed by what they saw of Giuliani’s public presentation in those days that questioning the reality behind his PR looks like second-guessing and digging up dirt just to smear the guy.

    These days, style trumps substance like paper covers rock. Bush walks around cluelessly until he finally climbs on the pile, grabs a bullhorn and shouts ‘we’re gonna get em’ and what do people remember? He reacted strongly to terrorism! It was his shining moment! Gimme a break.

    Now that America has finally begun to see the real Bush, I don’t think they’re anxious to hear that another of their heroes isn’t quite the guy they thought he was. And our cowardly press isn’t going to risk breaking their bubble.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t so desperate for heros that we looked a little more closely before we anoint them.

  • The WSJ’s John Harwood said Giuliani can claim “combat” experience.

    He didn’t do anything that, say, MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield didn’t do that day. Maybe she should be president.

    Bear in mind, too, that as of September, 2001, Giuliani’s term was almost over. If the plot had taken a few more weeks to unfold, he would’ve been gone.

    Of course, Giuliani would never have been elected mayor if Elaine hadn’t given Dinkins the silly idea to have everyone in New York wear name tags. Serenity now!

  • I am a life-long resident of NYC and was here on 9/11. I have friends who worked in and around the WTC (thankfully, they all survived). Several posters have touched on the real reason for the Rudy myth, with neil watson above coming closest. On 9/11 and in the days after NYC and the country needed a leader. Even if that leader did nothing but stand in front of a camera and reassure the country and the city that life would go on and we would come through the horror of that day. This job naturally falls to the president, but we had Bush. After Bush finished reading a children’s story about a goat, he disappeared for critical hours on 9/11 while they flew him around the country before depositing him in a whole in the mid-West. It wasn’t untl three days later that he showed up in NYC at the WTC site.

    As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. Into this vacuum left by our hapless, incompetent president stepped Guiliani. Not because he was a particularly great leader, or because he was doing great things, but just because there was no one else. I shouldn’t have used the phrase “stepped in” because that implies some thinking on Guiliani’s part — that he saw a need and filled it. The need was there all right, but he just happened to be the only person filling it. If he had disappeared into a hole like Bush did, NYC and the country would have found someone else to fit into that slot. Guiliani is now cynically capitalizing on that largely unearned prominence.

  • General Eisenhower, as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War Two, often had mud on his boots. Rudy Giuliani, as but one of many former mayors of New York City, is far beneath comparison to the mud on General Eisenhower’s boots. I could conceivably compare “RooDee Doody” (Howdy Doodee’s evil twin—sort of a “Chuckie” movie, but played upside down with the soundtrack reversed) as a load of intoxicated pig excrement—but I’ve yet to find any comparable documentation showing “The Ike” wandering aimlessly in a drunken haze through the pens a European pig farm….

  • A March 14 New York Times article reported that Harold A. Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said, “The whole issue of the radios is unforgivable. … Everyone knew they needed a better system, and he [Giuliani] didn’t get it done.”

    Almost six years after 9/11, the problem of interoperability of first responders radios has not been fixed, primarily because Congress won’t stand up to broadcast interests and reserve some of the electromagnetic spectrum for first responder use. The GAO reported on this in April:

    Specifications for three additional subsets of standards were defined over the past 2 years. However, ambiguities in the published standards have led to incompatibilities among products made by different vendors, and no compliance testing has been conducted to determine if these products are interoperable. Nevertheless, DHS has strongly encouraged state and local agencies to use grant funding to purchase Project 25 radios, which are substantially more expensive than non-Project 25 radios. As a result, states and local agencies have purchased fewer, more expensive radios that still may not be interoperable and thus may provide few added benefits. Until DHS modifies its grant guidance to provide more flexibility in purchasing communications equipment, states and localities are likely to continue to purchase expensive equipment that provides them with minimal additional benefits.

  • “But sometimes it seems that the most important thing on this site is to attack Republicans, not necessarily be honest”

    Well there is some honesty for you all!

  • Rudi was the pol with enough juice to get past the police lines for photo-ops . . .

    His administration was aware of the communications problems and he personally had chosen to keep the emergency command center in the WTC when Bernie Kerick wanted to put it underground in Brooklyn (where it is now). He didn’t do the right things before 9/11 for the same reason the Bushies didn’t: not enough visibility and no political gain.

    He did well at looking grim and determined in front of the cameras and he had a highly competent man in charge in Bernie Kerick.

    As a National Security Guru Giuliani is a nebbish with egg on his face.

  • “Well there is some honesty for you all! ” – jrs jr.

    just because somebody writes their (erroneous) presumption doesn’t make it an honest comment. but i’m sure it made your day……..

  • For Jessica Flowers (Comment #4):

    I’ve lived in Oklahoma all my life. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Governor Frank Keating was a comforting presence for all of us much as Rudy was after 9/11. It was the only time in Keating’s eight years as governor that he showed anything resembling compassion. At all other times he was a hard-right ideologue and an arrogant smart-ass.

    I believe that humans are hard-wired to fall in line behind their designated leaders when they see their group under attack, no matter how they feel about that leader at other times. The survival value of that characteristic is obvious. That’s why Rudy seems to have “national security” credentials.
    But Keating’s ambitions to be part of the Bush administration melted away when Cheney blew his cover about the money Keating took from Jack Dreyfus:

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20010115/ai_n10144189

    It won’t be long until Rudy melts in the sunshine like Frosty the Snowman.

  • We need some high definition screen saver sized shots of Rudy in drag. I’d even pay.
    Anybody got some?

  • Guilliano …9/11…TV…just keep saying it over and over again because that is the entire scope of his ability to deal with terrorists attacks and foreign policy…with the key word being “TV”. I’m hard pressed to believe that “anyone” in his position on 9/11 could have done what he did. Nothing outstanding besides just being there. He’s made a fortune from it which is his real motive and experience for wanting to be president.

    “But sometimes it seems that the most important thing on this site is to attack Republicans, not necessarily be honest”

    Now there’s an opinionated generalization having nothing to do with the discussion. I guess to some resentful readers the “truth” would seem like an attack. The facts are what they are. The rest is just your opinion about the facts. Now, “the most important thing”?, I mean really, that’s a resentment that’s been festering for awhile, eh Flowers? And then you get someone like “JRS Jr.” who wants to see only that, reducing the entire discussion to just “attacking republicans” as “the most important thing”.

  • AMAZING!!!~ Another draft dodger spouting how he would lead the way in fighting terrorism. Wants to be the commander in Chief of the same army he ran away from…almost to Canada.

    These guys (Bush, Cheney, Guilliano) always want to send others to do what they themselves were afraid to do. AMAZING!!!

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