Should 9/11 families tell Rudy Giuliani how to campaign?
Families of victims of the 9/11 attacks aren’t thrilled with Rudy Giuliani’s heavy emphasis of his service on that fateful day in his campaigning, which will include a trip to Ground Zero. This was news last week but it’s getting renewed attention here in Washington, because the Pentagon 9/11 memorial is coming along and some families visiting the site think he’s crossing the line. Giuliani is politicizing a shared national tragedy, and he should stop immediately, they said on the news tonight.
But do they have the moral right to tell Giuliani how to campaign? I would say no.
As a wag said on the segment I watched, Giuliani’s campaign would quickly fold without 9/11. He showed tremendous leadership that day and became America’s mayor, whatever his multitude of sins before that. I’m no Giuliani fan aside from his cleaning up of New York against jeering from the enlightened masses, which was quite an accomplishment, but I would have been fine with him retiring from the spotlight.
Obviously he disagrees, and he has every right to hark back to his role in the months after 9/11. We elect presidents not only for their views but for their performance under pressure. He thinks he has the experience under pressure – objectively I’d say the tortured McCain has the greater claim there – and voters should be able to decide on that. It’s not like he’s carrying around a charred piece of the World Trade Center and donning a firefighter hat.
There’s a lot of pressure these days to take the politics out of politics. It was evident in the hubbub over the normally yawnable firing of U.S. attorneys, political appointees who are as shamelessly political as any official I’ve ever encountered (as I wrote here), and much earlier, in the campaign finance reform debate, where reform-minded politicians infantilized the voters and told them they couldn’t make decisions for themselves unless protected from “special interests.” (What else is a congressman but a special interest?)
Discomfort with Giuliani hyping his response to 9/11 ultimately boils down to distrust in the voters to make an intelligent decision, I think. 9/11 families say they don’t want their horror to result in Giuliani’s benefit, but Giuliani doesn’t have a straight shot to the White House (or even the GOP nomination) simply because he runs on a platform of actions taken six years ago. If the voters think he’s a one-dimensional, backward-looking candidate – and I’d give that good odds – they’ll let him know, if not in public opinion polls sooner, than the primaries or general election later.
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8 Responses to “Should 9/11 families tell Rudy Giuliani how to campaign?”
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You seem to be saying that you don’t think the 9/11 families have the right to weigh THEIR opinion. We don’t always have the ability to choose who gets political air, but I think those families have as much right as anyone to weigh in.
If Rudy Giuliani only has a single good day to wrap his campain around, then he likely isn’t that good a candidate. In 2004 John Kerry ran a good portion of his campaign on an early military career. A group came out protesting his eiligibility to do so–and it made a difference. John Kerry wasn’t a good enough candidate to overcome their obfuscation and lying.
I think the 9/11 families have a much stronger case than the Swift Boaters, but then that’s my opinion.
“But do they have the moral right to tell Giuliani how to campaign? ”
I don’t understand the question. A long as we still have a free society, then every individual and every group has the right to express an opinion.
There is endless publically voiced commentary and advice on the campaigns of all the candidates; this is no different.
It was Giuliani himself who introduced 9/11 into his campaign. Those most directly affected have more of a right to address this issue than anyone else.
Regardless of their other background, when partisans of one party begin to make recommendations about the candidates from the other party, it is certainly reasonable to be suspicious of their motives. It is unlikely that they are really trying to help.
“… when partisans of one party begin to make recommendations….
..it is certainly reasonable to be suspicious of their motives”
1. I don’t how you conclude that the 9/11 families are all Democrats. When they speak out on 9/11 issues in NY, their comments are quite a mixed bag, politically speaking. Their issues are with Biuliani, and more broadly, with all officials having anything to do with 9/11.
Even if you are right,, my opinion stands. Republican tacticians comment on the tactics of Democratic candidates all the time, and vice-versa.
Even if they were called The Democratic Families of 9/11, they would have every right to voice an opnion.
2. Suspicious motives? The motive behind every political statement is to influence. This group expresses their views for the same reason anyone else does. Motives, in this sense, are quite overt. There is no reason to guess or suspect.
If someone doesn’t agree, or doens’t like the group
offering opinions – well, that’s another story.
2. Suspicious?
Yes, and I have been struck by how respectfully those Republican opinions are welcomed by the majority of commenters here. Not.
I also do not recall that the anti-Kerry group was called “Republican Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”. Somehow, their laughable pretense of non-partisanship did not make them any less “suspicious”, now did it?
Jason, -
You miss entirely what my argument is about.
Frst of all, the 9/11 families are a very strange group, born out of a need to always create heroes to be worshipped. From being victims, they have somehow morphed into being heroes and sages. Some of them are really thoughtful, IMO, and are well informed about what they talk about. But it’s not a uniform group, nor do they perform uniformally well. They also have major political disagreements among them, as I hear in local news.
Personally, I don’t think having a family member die is an automatic qualication for prominence. Beitng a ruthless political operative shouldn’t be either.
But the world works like it wokrs.
To discuss the quality of their statements or their quality as a group, though, is a completely separate issue than discussing their right to offer an opinion.
When a political statement is made public, everyone comments on it. The comments, though, do not define the statement, , nor do they have any bearing on the right to make the statement in the first place.
X makes a statement.
You comment that you agree.
I comment that I think it’s disgraceful
If we’re irritated by each other’s comments, too bad for us. We can either rebut, or shut up.
That’s how free speech works.
I don’t think it is possible to devise a movibational purity test before free speech rights are granted. Moreover, since you’ve posted several times denouncing speech codes, I would be surprised if you favored the application of such a tset.
We just have to live with the messiness of a democracy, make political statements and comment on them.
No, I think I am pretty clear on that. Republicans/conservatives bad, Democrats/liberals good, centrists/moderates must be secret squirrels for the other side, spin particular cases to fit — it’s a pretty consistent narrative that is easily grasped.
Personally, I believe everyone has “a right to offer an opinion”. I do not think that anyone has a right to be treated as authoritative or unbiased. What I find striking around here is that the Swift Boaters were supposed to be nothing but a bunch of evil partisan hacks when they attacked Kerry, but the 9/11 families (or some subset of them that is claiming to speak for the whole) is supposed to be above challenge when they are attacking a Republican.
Such double standards are a “red flag” for partisanship being the real controlling variable. I mean, I have no doubt that some post hoc justification can be cooked up to justify it (especially since anyone doing so around here can count on a sympathetic partisan audience from the vast majority of other commenters) but I am not buying it.