New York Times blogger and Princeton Nobel Prize-winning Economist Paul Krugman did what good bloggers are supposed to do: started a controversy regarding an event some might regard as sacred.
In a rather short blog post called “The Years of Shame” Krugman blogged:
The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
Nailing President Bush and Rudy Giuliani with the tag of “fake hero” is a bit extreme. First, I don’t think President Bush did anything heroic, nor would he consider himself a hero after 9-11. But then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani – to me – was a hero.
I don’t like Mayor Giuliani’s politics, but for a guy who has friends who’s politics he doesn’t side with that’s not an issue. The fact is Giuliani was the Mayor, and he pointed the way for New York’s rebound after the awful events that took place.
Was it wrong for Giuliani to seek the presidency after 9-11? Yes. On that, if it’s what Krugman had in mind, he is correct. For Giuliani to think he’s politically “all that” and run for the highest office in the land is an insult to the thousands of people who died in his city on 9-11.
it’s one thing to field offers to work as a disaster and public security consultant. After all, they’re coming to him for help, and given Giuliani’s experience, he had every right to cash in on such requests.
But running for President? Even with a Draft Giuliani For President effort, he should have said “NO.” That part – watching him go from hero to political used car salesman – was awful.
Giuliani knows he’s not qualified to be president, but so what? Giuliani’s effort rested on the backs of the 9-11 dead, for without their unwanted participation, Giuliani would have never even been considered as a presidential candidate.
From that perspective, current New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg can run for president and not seem smarmy in doing so. Bloomberg’s not qualified to be president either, but he didn’t become known because of a massive terrorist attack on New York City, and it can be said that he’s still virtually unknown in most of America.
Giuliani did and is well-known in America.
So if you stop and think about what Krugman wrote, he almost-wrong about Giuliani. As New York rushed to recover from 9-11, he stood tall in the saddle of Mayor of New York. But for him to even think of running for president, let alone mention the idea today, is indeed, a shameful act.
To the families of the victims of 9-11: God’s Speed.
(And please comment on Twitter or Zennie62.com; the SFGate.com comment platform is old and not troll-proof. At a time when many blogs are moving toward Facebook comment systems to root-out trolling, the SFGate system needs to be altered. I’ll not use it, until it’s improved.)