Tough-talking Giuliani touts his skills at crisis management
BY ROBYNN TYSVER
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
http://www.omaha.com


CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — Rudy Giuliani looks mildly irritated when a young professor at the University of Northern Iowa asks what he would do to motivate her disillusioned students.


Presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani campaigns last week at the Village Inn on West Broadway in Council Bluffs. The former New York City mayor has been running third in the GOP race in Iowa.The students don't vote, she says.

Giuliani doesn't feel her pain, or sympathize with the students sitting nearby.

"Here's what I would do about their disillusionment," he says, clapping his hands fast and loud, jolting more than a few in the campus ballroom crowd of about 200.

"Wake up! Look at America! No, really, take a look," he says. "You are living in a country that is the greatest country in the world. You are so lucky. People who lived before you never had this kind of freedom. People who lived before you never had this kind of opportunity."

"If you don't like something about this country, which you have every right not to like," he adds, "go fix it."

Meet Giuliani:
the tough guy on the presidential campaign trail.

A former mayor of New York City, Giuliani is remembered by many Americans as a steady hand in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath; the man who provided the city and country with leadership in those chaotic days.

The combative Giuliani also takes credit for making New York a safer place, cracking down on crime, pornography and the city's ballooning budget in the 1990s.

Rudolph William Giuliani
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Age: 63

Party: Republican

Professional career: U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, 1983-89;
head of Giuliani Partners, a consulting firm, 2002-present;
partner in the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm, 2005-present.

Political career: mayor of New York City, 1994-2001

Education: B.A., Manhattan College, 1965;
law degree, New York University School of Law, 1968

Family: Judith Nathan, married in 2003. (He has two grown children from a previous marriage.) The couple live in New York.

Religion: Roman CatholicToday, Giuliani is one of the top Republican presidential contenders, stumping across Iowa with a promise to use the same muscular style he honed in New York to lead the war on terror and close America's southern border to illegal immigrants.

"I believe I've been tested in a way in which the American people can look to me," Giuliani says. "They're not going to find perfection, but they're going to find somebody who has dealt with crisis almost on a regular basis and has had results."

When he entered the race, skeptics wondered whether a twice-divorced Catholic from the liberal bastion of New York, who supports abortion rights and once lived with a gay couple, could run competitively in the GOP primaries.

Today, Giuliani leads in national surveys on the Republican contest, but his social liberalism apparently has hurt him in Iowa, where he is in third place in most polls.

To shore up his support, Giuliani has tried to convince social conservatives that although he does not support outlawing abortions, he would appoint strict-construction judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Last month, he spoke at a Family Research Council gathering in Washington, D.C., telling the crowd his Catholic faith is at the core of his life.

"Because I find myself too often failing to reach the ideals of my religious and moral beliefs, I don't easily publicly proclaim myself as the best example of faith . . . but my belief in God and reliance on His guidance is at the core of who I am," he said.

Giuliani has wooed top religious leaders, with varying degrees of success. His high point may have come this month, when he received an endorsement from Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

Many Republicans who oppose abortion rights are not swayed by Giuliani's assertion that, as president, he would increase adoptions, not abortions.

"He's pro-choice and he's pro-abortion," insisted Dick Baber, who attended a Giuliani appearance in Council Bluffs at the urging of a friend.

"No, he's not! He's pro-adoption," responded Dennis Butler, the friend.

"To me, it's a Republican way of doing things. You don't regulate or legislate," Butler added.

Baber was unconvinced and planned to support Mitt Romney.

Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, has never shied from controversy. He raised eyebrows and made headlines during his two terms as mayor.

He was viewed by some as a pugnacious, insensitive leader who waged war on the homeless with budget cuts, fought crime at the expense of civil liberties and picked fights with other states.

He once said he would like to "blow up" the New York City Board of Education and suggested that other states should be forced to accept New York's garbage in exchange for their citizens enjoying the city's cultural offerings.

When he took office, Giuliani made crime his signature issue. He relied on the "broken windows" theory of policing, urging police to crack down on all crimes, big and small.

The theory is that even petty offenses, including graffiti, panhandling and broken windows, need to be pursued aggressively to send a message to criminals that order has been restored.

In his own words
"I've been tested . . . I had a job running what really is the third-largest government in the country and the second or third most complex. And I had it during two very difficult periods of time. I had it when it was going through a crime crisis and a fiscal crisis, and I had to change it. And, of course, on Sept. 11, when we were part of the worst attack in the history of the country."In 1993, the year before Giuliani took office, the city recorded 1,946 homicides. When he left City Hall in 2001 — at a time when crime numbers in many big cities across the nation were plummeting, in some cases more dramatically than in New York — the city's homicides had dropped to 714.

Giuliani points to his record on crime, but his rivals focus on another aspect of his mayoral record, accusing him of being soft on illegal immigration.

As mayor, Giuliani appeared to welcome illegal immigrants into his city. He approved a previous mayor's edict that they could report crimes without fear of deportation.

In 1994, Giuliani said: "If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you're one of the people who we want in this city."

Today, Giuliani talks tough, saying his policy of encouraging illegal immigrants to report crimes was part of his overall crackdown on crime.

He says he had to deal with the immigration problem, because federal authorities lacked either the will or resources to deport the more than 400,000 illegal immigrants living in New York.

If elected president, he says, he would bring the same zeal he brought to fighting crime to ending illegal immigration. His primary tools would be a fence on the southern border, new surveillance equipment, more border guards and tamper-proof identification cards.

As for the 12 million illegal immigrants living in this country, Giuliani supported President Bush's reform proposal, which would have established guest-worker provisions and a path to citizenship.

Although he may be out of step with his party on social issues, Giuliani's economic policies are in line with free-market Republicans. He supports tax cuts and fewer regulations. He says private business is almost always more efficient than government.

A case in point, says Giuliani, is his health care plan.

Giuliani has criticized plans by Democrats to establish a federal health care system for all Americans, calling universal plans a form of "socialized medicine."

Instead, Giuliani relies on the free market and would move Americans out of employer-based insurance plans.

"I know the Democrats bash our health care system all the time. And, yeah, it's not perfect. It really does need to be fixed, but it's still the best in the world," he said.

His plan would give families a $15,000 tax credit to buy health insurance on their own. If they obtained insurance coverage for less, they could keep the extra cash.

The idea is to stimulate competition, he says, empowering Americans to shop for the best insurance policy.

Giuliani says his approach on health care is a good example of the way he would govern. He is not a revolutionary, he says, but someone looking for ways to improve on the current system.

"Successful people are largely optimistic people," Giuliani told the students at Northern Iowa. "Successful people are largely the people who can look around and make you see the good that's there. And then they can solve the bad by using the good."

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The candidate's stands on key issues

Iraq

Supports the war, saying he will keep America on offense in the war on terror. Any effort to leave Iraq before the war is won will only embolden terrorists and allow them to bring the war home to American soil, he says.

Health care

Says efforts to create a universal health care plan amount to socialized medicine. Prefers a free market approach to reducing health care costs. Would give families a $15,000 tax credit to purchase private insurance, moving people out of employee-based systems and into the free market. That, he says, would increase competition and reduce insurance rates.

Immigration

Says he wants to help the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in this country become citizens. But they must learn to speak English, pay taxes and follow the law. Favors sealing the nations southern border by constructing a fence and increasing the number of Border Patrol agents from 12,000 to 18,000.

Abortion

Only major Republican candidate who supports abortion rights, saying he personally opposes abortion but believes it would be wrong to criminally prosecute women who obtained abortions.

Stem cell research

Supports loosening restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Says such research should not use embryos created for the express purpose of being destroyed.

Global warming

Believes the planet is getting warmer, but does not call for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Says America must wean itself off foreign oil by developing other sources of energy, such as coal, ethanol and nuclear power plants.

Free trade

Supporter of free trade, saying he will work to increase America's involvement in global markets. Says he will work to reduce taxes and regulations to improve the competitiveness of U.S. companies.