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.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.