November 17, 2016
Rudy Giuliani is a good choice for secretary of state — if you ignore the fact that he lacks the experience and temperament to be a diplomat, never mind the nation’s top diplomat.
True, Giuliani is smart and driven, a skilled lawyer, prosecutor and administrator. He reads and knows far more than Donald Trump. But choosing him for state is a little like sending former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who dreamed of creating a Department of Peace, to the Pentagon.
Giuliani’s professional world, which more than a few times has overlapped with mine, has mostly been in law enforcement and municipal government, not international affairs.
Convincing some foreign clients that they should overpay him because of his impressive performance after 9/11, which is what Giuliani has done as an international security consultant in recent years, does not remotely compare to the deep experience of recent chief diplomats.
We had the deeply grounded James Baker, as well as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton — Kerry chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Clinton the traveling First Lady and New York senator.
I can already hear the objections: What did all that experience get us but trouble?
It’s a facile dismissal of the importance of expertise. America’s standing in the world is not just an abstract popularity contest. A secretary of state with insufficient seasoning could hurt trade relations, environmental deals and disarmament agreements, and worsen rather than mitigate conflict.
More important than résumé is temperament. It took Abraham Lincoln’s wisdom and restraint to in effect apologize to the British when U.S. sailors boarded one of its vessels; he knew a war with England in 1861 was not a good idea. What would a human accelerant like Giuliani do when advising a hotheaded Trump?
A diplomat needs, perhaps more than anything else, the ability to listen and empathize to come up with solutions that work for all parties. Think of George Mitchell in Northern Ireland or Richard Holbrooke in Bosnia.
A man whose career was made as a prosecutor and my-way-or-the-highway mayor can be expected to listen approximately as well as Patton at war.
Recall what happened when an innocent black man, Patrick Dorismond, was harassed and then shot dead by police in 2000. The mayor illegally released his sealed juvenile records and said he was “no altar boy.” (Yet he was, indeed at his own high school.)
Or when a Bronx citizen filmed the NYPD rigging a traffic light to generate tickets and revenues. The next day, James Schillaci was arrested on a 13-year-old traffic warrant (which was quickly dismissed) and repeatedly attacked by the mayor.
Also recall Giuliani’s one official foray into international affairs. Spotting Yasser Arafat at a concert in Lincoln Center during UN week in 1995, the mayor dispatched his counselor Randy Mastro to tell the PLO leader that he had to leave.
An irked Arafat did, avoiding a bigger incident and earning Rudy some good headlines — but also the consternation of the State Department navigating the fragile Middle East.
Like Gov. Al Smith after his glory days, Rudy too has turned nasty and reactionary as he ages. He said “I do not believe that the President (Obama) loves America.”
And this week he showed his diplomatic savvy by referring to the tens of thousands protesting Trump’s electoral vote win as “goons and thugs.”
Last, his comments throughout 2016 that he would relish the opportunity to prosecute the Democratic nominee were disgraceful, unprecedented in presidential campaigns.
Rudy wears badly because of such interpersonal imperialism and a history combining hyperbole and ferocity. But his career may now be miraculously saved a second time.
By Sept. 10, 2001, he was plunging in polls because of how racially divisive he was. Because of his leadership after the terrorist attacks, he went from Nixon to Churchill in a day.
Now again, he’s been in career eclipse, to the point that a former deputy mayor told me a month ago that “nearly all his former top people are disgusted with the way he’s acting.” Ironically, just as the tragedy of 9/11 resurrected him 15 years ago, a political tragedy may rehabilitate him again.
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