Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani begins and ends his book with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 which occurred during his final year as mayor. Sandwiched in between are several hundred pages of Giuliani’s views on management and leadership.   

Like most of these books that public figures seem programmed to write after their term in office expires, Giuliani’s book is both self-referential and self-serving.  He re-caps in a favorable light his accomplishments during his eight years as mayor, but, to his credit, Giuliani has plenty to favorably highlight.  His leadership during the 9/11 disaster was truly exemplary as was the order he brought to the chaotic and crime-ridden New York City of the 90s.  This book is interesting reading for anyone, but especially for New Yorkers and certainly for those who lived in the city during the 9/11 attacks.  

The way that Giuliani turned around crime in NYC is legend, but true legend of course.  In this book, he describes in readable fashion how his administration employed George Kelling’s Broken Windows Policy along with Compstat, regular precinct meetings and quality of life arrests to begin what would be the remarkable restoration of New York City to safety and livability.  He describes how he bypassed the bureaucracy to rout the squeegee-men at the bridges and tunnels and engage the MTA in the fight against graffiti in the subway system.  

He made Times Square and Bryant Park walkable again. He lowered taxes, dealt with a spate of plane crashes that had taken off from JFK and reformed the city’s welfare system.  His account of his dealings with the city hospitals is informative.  He made extensive changes to the Child Welfare Administration, separating it from the HRA to make it an independent and better functioning agency under the name of the Administration for Children’s Services.  

This book, though not autobiography, does have a trace of the personal in it.  The mayor shares a little about his schooling, his parents and more than I cared to know about his prostate cancer.  He included that subject in the chapter on decision making, a bit contrived perhaps.  He wrote just a bit here and there about his children.  He had nothing to say about his second wife, Donna Hanover and surprisingly more to say about his relationship with Judith Nathan who became his third wife (they are now divorced or in the process thereof).  He makes copious references to baseball and his love of that sport and other pastimes.  His account of how he prepared himself for the mayoralty is good reading.  He includes also reflections on his years as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and his years in the Justice Department. This is personal autobiography only to the extent that Giuliani wants it to be which is not all that much.  

Entirely missing from this book was any discussion by Mayor Giuliani of the role that his Catholic faith may have played in his personal formation or his decisions as mayor.  He does mention some of the nuns and brothers in his Catholic school education.  He did consider the priesthood for a time.  But in the day-to-day challenges of running a large and complex city neither prayer, church nor faith are discussed.  Something must account for his strong sense of justice, fair play, sense of responsibility and right vs. wrong.  I would have thought it would be his Catholic background.    

Rudy Giuliani is a man with a keen intellect that he puts to constant use in order to unpack issues, resolve problems and get a job done.  He is not one given to brooding introspective reflection or soul-searching self-analysis.  He is a man of action who uses incisive reasoning and facts to address life’s challenges.   Giuliani is not the most charismatic of public figures in case you didn’t know.  In fact, he’s pretty low on the likeability factor.   As he himself says, as a prosecutor he wouldn’t be doing his job if people found him likeable.  (I paraphrase.)  Nor does Giuliani have physical attributes working to his advantage.  He lacks the towering presence of a reserved six-foot-tall George Washington.  He could not pull off appearing in native Cherokee dress in the streets of Washington, D.C. as Sam Houston did.  He does not have the classic good looks of a JFK and he even has that slight speech irregularity barely noticeable as it is.  

What he does have is steely determination and an abundance of brainpower and confidence.  It must be said that he has used these to advantage and achieved to an admirable degree.  His contributions to the city of New York are, alone, enough that he should occupy a well-deserved place as a notable public figure.