Pondering the reputation of Rudy Giuliani during his tenure as New York City mayor, I suppose I arrive at the Chris Matthewsism “He got rid of the pee smell in the Subway”.\u00c2\u00a0 Delve that a bit deeper than the immediate problem, and it is that he managed the homeless problem — solving it by shoving them to New Jersey.<\/p>\n
That is not unattractive or without its virtues to the New York City voting public.\u00c2\u00a0 He, I hear,\u00c2\u00a0solved (or\u00c2\u00a0lessened to a considerable extent)\u00c2\u00a0New York City’s crime problem.\u00c2\u00a0 As often happens, the crime rate’s drop started with the previous administration — the much maligned Dingle Administration — but this goes along my contention that George Herbert Walker Bush would have been re-elected had Alan Greenspan lowered the interest rates a whiff sooner than he did, as the economic recovery was starting at the end of his administration.\u00c2\u00a0 Them’s the breaks!<\/p>\n
So it was that Rudy Giuliani fired the police\u00c2\u00a0commissioner — Bill Bratton\u00c2\u00a0of the “Broken Windows” docrtine –\u00c2\u00a0that Time gave a cover feature regarding how the city was turning crime around, lest he receive less credit.\u00c2\u00a0 Or so goes the speculation.<\/p>\n
Which all may be moot.\u00c2\u00a0 By the time the NYPD plunged a plunger up a black man’s anus, Giuliani’s general public approval had dissolved away, taking this to be a bit gratuitious.\u00c2\u00a0 I think these general police controversies are the hallmarks of just about every city’s government (LAPD being most famous).\u00c2\u00a0 The electorate shifts about a little, and I suppose the core supporters, his most ardent supporters, wouldn’t see anything wrong with any of the racially-tinged police incidents.\u00c2\u00a0 The pee-smell in the Subway has been wiped out, after all.<\/p>\n