Giuliani's Gorgeous Mosaic
BROOKS, DAVID
Giuliani's Gorgeous Mosaic By David Brooks I'm in a room with 2,000 New Yorkers, none of whom knows who Frank Rich is. It's about 9 p.m. at Rudy Giuliani's midtown victory celebration, but the...
...Giuliani goes into his second term vowing to declare war on drugs—that too will go down well in the boroughs...
...She wants to be an actress and a TV star...
...Let them in...
...You can go years without seeing so many Reagan Democrats in one place...
...He has already touted the crime figures and New York's new spirit and all that...
...But Giuliani can be stiff and formal with Manhattanites...
...It is unexpected and unaffected emotion...
...Rudy Giuliani is probably more rooted in his neighborhood than we cosmopolitans have realized...
...at Rudy Giuliani's midtown victory celebration, but the crowd is area-code 718...
...These are the ethnics who got castigated as Archie Bunkers...
...To hear him talk about the porn merchants and the gamblers is to sense how much he is revolted by indecent behavior, by people who aren't tough on themselves and who don't work honestly and hard...
...Among other things this will mean taking on the municipal unions, whose cushy work rules and pay scales lead directly to New York's incredible tax rates...
...These are the bridge-and-tunnel people from Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, where few people read the columnists on the New York Times op-ed page and sometimes the local newsdealer doesn't even carry the paper...
...But while Giuliani has intense political ambitions, he seems to have no interest in social-climbing his way to Park Avenue...
...He declares it was when the federal government tried to shut off benefits to hard-working legal immigrants, and New York stood up to fight...
...But Election Night, it's obvious how unfair that scorn was...
...But then he says that of all the things about the city that make him proud, there is one thing that makes him proudest (he is shouting at this point...
...A group of six Hispanic politicos swings by in one direction, a clutch of Pakistanis swoops past in the other, four black nationalists in African garb are milling about on the left, some Chinese women are chatting on the right...
...Then the mayor comes down for his victory speech and immediately starts kissing men...
...Rudy the Mob-buster is being advertised as Rudy the Purple Dinosaur...
...He wasn't kissing men the way some Manhattan men kiss men...
...Security is tight for this event, and my theory is they hired night-club bouncers and told them to reverse their criteria...
...The MC, the actor Ron Silver, invites the crowd to watch a five-minute campaign film...
...They wait patiently for Giuliani's appearance (Manhattanites pronounce his name Julie-Onnie...
...But surely the central challenge for Giuliani now is to revive New York's economy...
...But the movie is doing nothing for the people in this room...
...the people in this room pronounce it Julie-Annie...
...He is bellowing into the microphone, and the white ethnics all around me are cheering and roaring...
...But this is an agenda even more challenging than the first-term crime agenda...
...And we won...
...Giuliani has shown that he is willing to take on his base when it is good for the city—he is in the midst of a bruising battle with the heads of the police union...
...Most people laugh when you suggest that a pro-choice, pro-affirmative-action, pro-gun-control, pro-gay-rights Republican like Rudy can have a future outside of New York City...
...The one genuinely moving moment of the night comes in the midst of his victory speech...
...Giuliani's status as a prototypical Reagan Democrat also has implications for his career after City Hall...
...They knew that urban riots weren't justified rebellions...
...They knew that law and order wasn't a code word for racism...
...The union leaders Giuliani will have to crush, though, are bridge-and-tunnel people...
...This was belly-to-belly, secure-in-my-masculinity, grab-you-by-the-face, razor-stubble kissing...
...He was kissing big fat Italian men on the cheeks...
...He is a Reagan Democrat...
...You wouldn't want a city governed strictly according to the preferences of the insurance salesman from Bensonhurst, but these people have been right about a lot of things over the years...
...His wife, who is scarcely seen with him and who does not attend this election-night rally, seems to have social ambitions...
...These people kept alive some sensible ideas that Manhattanites are only lately rediscovering...
...It's good to have these people in power again...
...The sweet-Rudy ploy worked with the TV reporters—he got glowing coverage for his softer style...
...But most Republicans who take these socially liberal positions are snobs when it comes to the social conservatives...
...He goes on to praise the legal immigrants who put in those incredible hours on the job...
...Girls in spangled heels, with too much eyeliner and evening gowns in the tres Atlantic City style...
...Giuliani spent the final weeks of the campaign talking about caring, cuddliness, and compassion...
...One suspects that it's the snobbery as much as the positions that drives mainstream conservatives up the wall...
...Tonight he is open, fluid, and ebullient with the bridge-and-tunnel crowd...
...The ethnic groups travel in packs, like teenagers cruising at the mall...
...This has implications for how he is going to conduct himself over the next four years...
...Suddenly it's clear that Rudy Giuliani is not just a politician who appeals to Reagan Democrats...
...Guys with brown shirts, brown suits, and black leather jackets...
...Frank Luntz, Giuliani's political consultant, has brought his saccharine style with him from Washington...
...Many of them are up partying in Giuliani's suite on the 44th floor...
...We think of him as the worldly Wall Street prosecutor with squads of Yale assistants...
...don't see...
...They knew all along that there was something screwy about ceding control of public places to panhandlers, pushers, and crazies...
...The music is mushy New Age...
...It shows the mayor in scene after scene with smiling schoolkids...
...The place looks like an Italian bar mitzvah, with rabbis all about and old men with Italian-American lapel pins looking for chairs so they can rest their feet...
...Young men with moussed-back hair and New York Rangers jerseys...
...Busting crime and even battling the mob are prototypical Reagan Democrat activities...
...And while his politics are socially liberal, he is no urbane relativist...
...Giuliani is the opposite of a snob...
...Some of these people stand nervously against the wall, as if the Manhattan taste police are going to swoop down and evict anybody with the wrong accent, no neck, and too much back hair...
...he exults...
...This really is a gorgeous mosaic...
...You can take these people out, you just can't dress them up...
...If you know New York only from the newspapers or Seinfeld or the cop shows, this is the New York you David Brooks is a senior editor of The Weekly Standard...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 10
