Pondering Presidential Possibilities

So my boy Rudy Giuliani has recently announced that he intends on running for President. It's no secret that I'm of the opinion that Rudy is the best thing since Ruffles potato chips. Let me explain why:

It's been said that New York is the "least American of American cities" whatever that means. I suppose the author of that phrase meant that the local culture here is vastly different from America "west of the Hudson River" which is certainly true - can't argue against that. When people in Illinois or Kansas or California hug their cars, New Yorkers ride the subway. When Idahoans shop at Wal-mart for groceries, New Yorkers shop at the corner store down the street. When a rash of red overtakes much of the country, New York stays undoubtably blue, with one exception: when Rudy Giuliani runs for President.

There's a huge culture clash between the two Americas (I don't consider New York any less American than Kentucky as some elitests do). The "Everywhere else" America has dominated politics for years and years, ever since the days of FDR. And before him, Theodore Roosevelt. New Yorkers are often criticised as being too hard, but many a New Yorker would respond with the assertion that other Americans are too soft.

In so many ways, Rudy Giuliani epitomizes the stereotypical New Yorker. He's divorced twice (on his third marriage now), publically humiliates and fires high-ranking government officials, and generally doesn't give a flying fuck what others think of him. It took that sort of leader to fix New York in a time when the city was deemed "ungovernable." 2500 homicides per year, the worst schools in the nation, and a homeless population so gigantic you literally had to step over. Things were a mess and it took the most bad-ass of badasses, Rudy, to fix it.

As a child growing up in the New York of the late 80's and early 90's, I remember well the condition the city was in. Yes, crime and poverty were out of control. But the worst part was that the city was losing pride in itself. There was a very real fear that Tokyo would overtake New York as the world's foremost city. People here were beaten down in economic dispair. Giuliani gave us something to be proud of. The Tokyo threat fell apart and we quickly became the safest and most prosperous city in the United States. Now that dull cities like Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Portland were more dangerous than New York, there really was no reason to live in any of those places (in a New Yorker's mind at least). The city was sparkling clean; we were more arrogant than ever. Badass Rudy had successfully governed the ungovernable. And it was lovely.

On that Tuesday morning in September, I woke up to see the story unfolding on television. I had moved to Montana by that time and New York was but a distant memory. My mom shook me awake yelling that "New York was being bombed!" Huh? What the fuck? Let me tell you, being a New Yorker, knowing the exact locations of all the WTC footage, and wondering if a nuke was coming next was unsettling. In a time when our President was reading books to children, shuttling himself around the country, and otherwise missing in action, Rudy was there, keeping things as calm as possible. For once, the world saw a different side of Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III. No longer was he embarassing one of his two ex-wives on Channel 2, threatening to throw the United Nations out of New York, or otherwise being typical hard Rudy. He was soft when we needed it most. I won't forget his speech to the city late that night: "The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear" with a tear running down his cheek. But Rudy wasn't the only only one showing his other side - nearly each and every one of the eight million New Yorkers behaved differently that day. The stereotype of the hardened New Yorker was shattered. The world had discovered New York's deepest, darkest secret: New Yorkers only WANT to be seen as rude, hard, and uncaring. It was all a show.

A lot of people not familiar with New York can't ever understand the emotional transformation the city went through, nor will they understand Rudy's part in that. And who can blame them if they've never set foot in the place? Probably sounds really quite corny. But we'd been hit in the kneecaps - hard - with a metal baseball bat. And no, it wasn't entirely Rudy that repaired our knees.

The following morning, newspapers around the world had all sorts of touching headlines. On the front page of the San Francisco Examiner was the headline "Bastards!" France's "Le Monde" had declared "We are all New Yorkers." The BBC compared modern-day America to the British Empire during its glory days, with New York as the modern-day London. The world had rallied around us.

And then our President invaded Iraq in 2003 and pissed it all away.

So that brings us to today, and why America needs Rudy. Let's face it, many in the world thinks we're morons. I'm not worried about them in particular: if they assume that the American public is stupid just because our President is a moron, then they're probably assholes. But there are more reasonable ones out there. Let's not give the assholes more arguments to use against us.

The most worrying problem, though, is that Americans are embarassed to admit that they're from America. Some American tourists in Europe even pretend they're Canadian. The fact that Bush has put Americans in this position is a damn shame.

We need Rudy to breathe pride back into our national psyche, just as he made New York a proud city during the 90's. We need a leader.