There’s been some suggestion of late that Rudy Giuliani deserves credit for not throwing his corrupt friends, most notably Bernie Kerik, under the bus. Giuliani, like a certain failed president we know, values loyalty above all else, and is willing to be loyal in return.
The NYT’s Gail Collins, in her best column since returning to the op-ed page in July, offers some very valuable advice to the political world: “Whenever you read that a candidate ‘values loyalty above all else’ — run for the hills. Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you’re choosing a pet, but not a cabinet member.”
The Giuliani version of loyalty, which bears a terrifying resemblance to the George W. Bush brand of loyalty, is entirely about self-protection. An administration safe beneath the loyalty cone does not have to worry much about leaks to the press, or even whistle-blowing.
People can screw up, or fail to achieve their missions, knowing the guy at the top will protect them as long as they put his well-being ahead of anything else. When disaster strikes, the whole world may be falling apart, but they will all be clumped together, walking north.
Quite right. Giuliani isn’t looking out for his friends out of some sense of nobility; he’s doing so because he wants yes-men who will put Team Giuliani above the interests of everyone else.
Collins even adds an example I hadn’t heard before.
Giuliani had a great police commissioner, Bill Bratton, during his first term when all the critical crime-fighting apparatus for which the administration became so famous was put into place. But Bratton was not particularly loyal, in the sense that he did his job well, then enjoyed taking credit for it himself. And so he was gone.
There is an entire chapter in Rudy Giuliani’s famous book “Leadership” that is titled “Loyalty, the Vital Virtue.” In it, he pats himself on the back for making a man named Robert Harding the city’s budget director even though he knew the ever-feckless news media would point out that Harding’s father, Ray, was the chairman of the city’s Liberal Party, whose endorsement had done a great deal to get Giuliani elected mayor. “I wasn’t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet the critics,” he said.
For some mysterious reason, the book skips over a much better loyalty lesson involving the very same family. Giuliani demonstrated his loyalty to Ray Harding, giver of the Liberal Party endorsement, not only by giving his qualified son a good job, but also by turning over the New York City Housing Development Corporation to another son, Russell, who wound up embezzling more than $400,000 for vacations, gifts and parties. We will not even go into the pornography part, except to point out in his defense that of the 15,000 sexually explicit images found on his computer, only a few were of children.
It’s tempting to think Giuliani is just a bad judge of character, which might explain why he’s consistently surrounded himself with felons. But that seems to miss the point — he’s not a bad judge of character; he doesn’t care about character at all. “Loyalty” isn’t just at the top of the list; it’s the only item on the list.
Remember, when Kerik was welcomed into the Giuliani inner circle, he compared it to joining an organized crime family.
Mr. Kerik followed Mr. Giuliani downstairs to a dimly lighted room. There waited Mr. Giuliani’s boyhood chum Peter J. Powers, who was first deputy mayor, and other aides. One by one, they pulled Mr. Kerik close and kissed his cheek.
“I wonder if he noticed how much becoming part of his team resembled becoming part of a mafia family,” Mr. Kerik wrote. “I was being made.”
I never thought I’d see a presidential hopeful who had a less-healthy approach towards loyalty, and yet, here we are.