Archive [May 2000]

My thoughts and prayers are with the Mayor in light of his health concerns. But no matter what decision he makes on the Senate race, his political analysis is unequaled:

Rush: First thing I want to ask: If it weren’t for Hillary, would you be doing this? Do you really want to be a Senator from New York?

Giuliani: Sure. Absolutely. There’s no question that the idea that it’s Hillary makes it more exciting, makes it more interesting, and creates more of a platform for ideas. But the work I’ve done as Mayor of New York City is what I can carry on in the Senate.

Rush: A couple of years ago I was at a fundraiser for you out in the Hamptons. You had just flown to Minneapolis with Clinton in support of his crime bill, and all the people at that fundraiser gave you grief. You handled it very well — you went out of your way to forthrightly say that the President’s crime bill was good for New York City. You’ve supported this President. You’ve endorsed Mario Cuomo. Now, how does it feel to have the White House, and in essence the entire power of the federal government, effectively running against you in this race?

Giuliani: I think it gives you a sense of what the Clintons are all about. President Clinton is actually on record saying that I’m “one of the most courageous public officials in the country,” and that it would go well for American politics if there were more public officials with the kind of courage I have. But he’s also somebody that I sued, which people don’t remember, in the Supreme Court of the United States over the line item veto — which had been unconstitutionally passed by him and utilized to pull something like $2.5 billion for health care out of New York State. He eliminated an item that Senator Al D’Amato had put in — in order, we always thought, to get even with him because it was during the D’Amato Whitewater investigation. We sued President Clinton and won a big constitutional victory in the Supreme Court. I agree with the line item veto, but you have to do it by constitutional amendment. You can’t do it by just passing legislation.

So I’ve been on both sides. If I think he’s right, I’ve supported him; and more often, when I think he’s wrong, I’ve come out against him.

Rush: Yes, but he’s showing no affection for you.

Giuliani: We have largely a very different view of the world. I think he and Mrs. Clinton — despite all the discussion of “New Democrat” this and “New Democrat” that — basically rely on government to solve problems first and foremost. My view is that government should be looked to last to solve problems.

Rush: And they want it even bigger. By the way, is it your intention, and I hope it is, to keep referring to her through the campaign as Mrs. Clinton?

Giuliani: Until she changes the name. Officially.

Rush: Mario Cuomo was asked why he’s not endorsing you, since you endorsed him in his last run for Governor. I saw this on CNN; it was unbelievable. Cuomo said, “There’s a big difference here. Mayor Giuliani endorsed me because I was against” — as he says — “Reaganomics, but now Mayor Giuliani is endorsing Reaganomics. I’ll deal with him personally but no, I can’t endorse him.” All the people on the left that you have sought to make an alliance with are not in your corner.

Giuliani: And they won’t be.

Rush: Does that surprise you?

Giuliani: No. I supported Mario Cuomo the first year I was Mayor. The city was in grave fiscal circumstances then. I didn’t have confidence that George Pataki would be as supportive of the city as he turned out to be. If I had known the way George Pataki would operate with regard to the city, and how he would be equitable and fair, I would have endorsed him as I did when he ran for re-election. But at the time, I had been Mayor about eight or nine months. George Pataki had represented communities outside the city and had a voting record that I regarded as one that would be harmful to the city. I did not anticipate — I guess it was my mistake in not seeing — that upon becoming Governor, he would treat the city as fairly, as equitably as he did. From the day he became Governor he’s been very, very fair to the city. The strangest thing is, and I think this is true with several ups and downs, George Pataki and I have probably had the best relationship that a governor and a mayor have had in years. Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch never got along. Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsey were always considered to be enemies, rivals. George Pataki and I have worked together on many things.

Rush: With the Presidential race having arrived, he has made some policy direction changes recently. Does your relationship remain as good as it was?

Giuliani: Yes. Largely it’s the same philosophy. He has lowered taxes, probably more than any other governor in the history of the state. I’ve lowered taxes more than any other mayor in the history of the city. We both are, essentially, economic conservatives. He and I support virtually the same measures on reducing crime. Those have been the two big areas of collaboration.

Rush: You know, I kept hearing, “Wait till Mrs. Clinton has to deal with the tough New York media.” But the media’s not tough on her, the media’s tough on you. You’ve been criticized for the Patrick Dorismond shooting. But it’s not been reported that under your administration the number of shots fired by cops at civilians has been dramatically reduced. In ‘90, under Dinkins, there were 41 fatalities resulting from shots fired by cops. In ‘99, under your administration, only 11. Where’s the press on this?

Giuliani: I think you have to live with the fact that a large percentage of the press — 75 to 80 percent — will generally cover a Democrat more favorably than a Republican. It’s just a fact of life. So you live with that and try to deal with it by communicating with people directly; getting your message out in a direct way. One of the reasons that I spend so much time raising money is because I realize that I’ll have to have at least as much money as she has, and probably more to overcome the advantage that she has in terms of the free media.

Rush: Speaking of raising money, Mrs. Clinton is complaining about your fundraising letters. The media has run article after article scrutinizing your fundraising. The New York Times is concerned that you “appear to have tapped a vein of deep loathing for Mrs. Clinton.” They’re worried that you’re collecting money from too many out-of-state “Hillary haters.”

Giuliani: That’s a perfect example of the distortion in the media coverage. She has collected more money out of state than I have. Fifty-six percent of her funds have come from outside New York state. Only 45 percent of mine have come from outside the state. She has gotten money from all of the very left-wing Hollywood people. She’s gotten money from Sean “Puffy” Combs. They don’t make a big deal about that. The fundraising we’ve done is a broad cross-section of people. We’re at something like 200,000 people at this point. A good deal of it has been aided by the fact that a lot of people oppose her — but they oppose her for honest-to-goodness differences in philosophy and approach.

Rush: I just find it amazing; here’s a carpetbagger coming into New York and they’re upset at you for raising money from outside the state. Besides, this is, in effect, a national Senate race.

Giuliani: Right. I have much more support in the state than they do. What happens with the Clintons is, if you disagree with them in good faith over political philosophy, or political approach, all of a sudden you become some kind of a crazy insane right-wing conspirator. In fact, you may just have a different political philosophy than they have. It’s perfectly legitimate to say, we don’t want Hillary Clinton in the Senate because every indication is she’s going to create government-controlled medicine.” Or, “every indication is that she doesn’t support tax cuts.” She in fact, if you listen to her carefully, supports tax increases. If you are someone who thinks that the best way to help the economy of New York is to reduce taxes, you would donate money to the candidate that’s more likely to reduce taxes. If you have the view that the Clinton foreign policy is probably the most disorganized foreign policy that we’ve had in the last 50 years, then you would say to yourself “Gee, we want somebody in the Senate who’s going to stand up against a foreign policy like that, who is going to set a different direction.” So there are a lot of reasons why people would be opposed to her — good, honest-to-goodness reasons that arise in a democracy when you don’t like the direction that this administration has taken.

Rush: One of those reasons is the way these people get what they want. They create a crisis mentality on every issue. New York was humming. Everything was just fine — until Mrs. Clinton wants to be Senator from New York. Now she rolls in and suddenly there is the appearance of unrest in New York City. She ratchets that issue up so that she can blame it on you. Really, this city is so much better. I moved here in 1988; there’s no comparison now, and yet she’s in trying to create this image of total disarray and unrest because of you. What is your answer to that?

Giuliani: This is why we have to do as much advertising as we do, to communicate the change in the economy of the city, how jobs are at an all-time high, how welfare is down by 560,000 people, how crime is down to the lowest level in 34 to 35 years, how, as you mentioned, the record of the New York Police Department for restraint is even better than their record for crime reduction.

The Justice Department is investigating the New York Police Department, which happens to be the most restrained police department in the country. There are literally two or three hundred other police departments that they would have to look at before they came to New York. In 1999, there was about four times greater chance that you’d be shot by a policeman in Washington D.C. than in New York City. I’m not suggesting they should investigate any police department because I don’t know that it warrants it, but New York City certainly doesn’t warrant it.

Rush: You just said it: the Justice Department of the United States! I personally think justice has gone out of this department; it’s certainly a far different Justice Department now than when you were U.S. Attorney. They are investigating not just the police department, but what you’ve done to the environment. The full force of the federal government has been brought down on you and your administration. Is this uncommon in politics?

Giuliani: Yes. The Clinton use of the Justice Department and the Clinton politicizing of the Justice Department is, from my experience, really unique — and I know the Justice Department probably better than I do New York City because I worked for it longer. This is not something that happened in the Nixon Administration, the Ford Administration, the Carter Administration, the Reagan or the Bush Administration.

Rush: Does it bother you that the American people don’t seem to be concerned about this and other federal abuses?

Giuliani: Yes.

Rush: Why do you think they’re not bothered by it?

Giuliani: I think that the Clintons have put the American people to sleep in two areas, maybe three. But two are related: foreign policy and the military. People don’t realize the importance of foreign policy any longer. Maybe it’s the Clinton approach since way back in ‘92, with “It’s the economy, stupid” — as if foreign policy weren’t important. Now I think it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, other Presidents or Administrations wouldn’t have gotten away with the way in which they’ve politicized the Justice Department. The refusal to appoint an independent counsel after the LaBella report is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary.

Rush: Not to mention the way they used the federal bench in D.C. to appoint judges on Clinton cases, rather than go through the normal random selection process.

Giuliani: It s a very close connection between the White House and the Justice Department, and the Justice Department pursuing political ends. The press would have been much more sensitive if it were a Republican President, but I even think they were more sensitive to it with Jimmy Carter.

Rush: Is it your impression that the purpose of this use of the Justice Department is to cover up Clinton wrongdoing?

Giuliani: That I can’t say personally, because I don’t know those cases. I do know that the investigations they have directed toward New York are certainly not justified by the facts. And they’re ignoring an awful lot of situations that are far worse in other places in order to take a look at New York City.

Rush: Is Al Sharpton helping or hurting Mrs. Clinton?

Giuliani: Ultimately it hurts her. That’s one of the points of some of the fundraising that we did, and some of what we said in those fundraising letters. When George W. Bush received so much criticism for Bob Jones University, the first thing that occurred to me was, “How come Democrats don’t receive an equal measure of criticism for their association with Al Sharpton? Why aren’t they required to apologize, and to distance themselves from a man who has a history of intolerance that you just can’t ignore?” All of a sudden, you have Al Gore and Bill Bradley embracing him at their debate, Mrs. Clinton sitting next to him and making a big point of seeking his support. Here you have a man whose history of anti-Semitism, of anti-white language and behavior, of incendiary language, that, all of a sudden, doesn’t count for anything. I think there are a lot of people who see the disparity there.

Rush: We Republicans have been saying that we think the American people are going to “get it” for eight years about these people in this Administration. But they don’t see it. Or if they do, they don’t care. It’s really frustrating. I think you have an enormous challenge with advertising and the press coverage in New York to expose all of the things we’ve been discussing regarding Mrs. Clinton, and her campaign and her associates.

Giuliani: I think there’s a core feeling in the United States of just being exhausted with the Clintons and Gore. America needs a fresh start. Let’s see if we can’t put this behind us and try to start fresh again. I think that as George W. Bush refocuses his campaign, he’s going to be a lot stronger candidate than people realize.

Rush: I agree.

Giuliani: I put Al Gore and Hillary Clinton into essentially the same category. After all, what they’re running on is the success and continuation of the Clinton Administration. That’s Al Gore’s claim on the Presidency, right? He’s going to continue the Clinton Administration.

Rush: You represent the end of Clintonism. It’s a huge responsibility.

Giuliani: Yes, I think that’s right. Think of the Clinton Administration in two parts, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. She will carry on the policies of Bill Clinton in the Senate and I think she’ll be even more ideologically committed than her husband. I think Gore will probably be more ideologically committed, more left-wing, than President Clinton.

Rush: No question. Now, I want to give you a chance here to respond to some of the things that Hillary is saying. Let me repeat to you some of Hillary’s charges: “We don’t have leadership in the city that cares about people who need an extra hand to get up and get going.”

Giuliani: I think we finally have leadership in New York that helps people to get going. For about 40 to 50 years, the only thing we had in New York was basically making people dependent. We had 1.1 million people on welfare. The answer of city government under the Democrats who support her was to put more people on welfare, and to lock them into poverty. What we’ve done in the last four to five years is reduce the welfare rolls by between 540 and 560 thousand people. We’ve created more jobs than the city has ever created since they started counting it back in 1950.

Rush: No wonder she’s upset!

Giuliani: So, it’s leadership toward independence, toward opportunity, toward working, instead of being dependent. It takes a lot more courage to lead people in a direction that maybe isn’t the easiest but it’s a lot better for them than saying, “Come into the welfare office and we’ll put you on welfare” as opposed to “Come into the welfare office and we’ll find you a job.” I’ve turned welfare offices in New York City into employment agencies.

Rush: You have just defined, to me, the No. 1 challenge conservatives have in this era, and that is telling people they are more responsible for themselves but they’re going to be better off. A lot of people don’t want to hear it.

Giuliani: It’s a much more compassionate, loving message —

Rush: Thank you!

Giuliani: — than to say to people, “We don’t really care about you, be dependent.” I’m very proud of that. Among American cities, New York was the worst. Basically, we locked people in poverty; we locked them into dependency which people can’t get out of. It’s very hard to get out of dependency. What we’ve done now is unlock them. We’ve now allowed the genius of America to happen for poor people, which is work, opportunity, taking care of yourself, taking care of your family. To me, that’s real leadership.

Rush: Mrs. Clinton says your administration has not done enough to train welfare recipients, and that you’ve shown a desire to cut people off from benefits.

Giuliani: What all the literature on welfare back in the ’80s was saying about welfare I took very seriously, which is: There were all kinds of training programs, but nobody ever got a job. They were being trained forever. The most important thing to do is to keep people in the workforce, to keep them getting up in the morning and going to work. As you keep them in the workforce, then you give them additional training.

Rush: What happened to the squeegee guys? You got them off the street and where are they now?

Giuliani: About half of them are in jail. The other half went and got a job. When I first did it, there was a big article in the New York Post about some guy who had been a squeegee operator. He got a job in a restaurant and was complaining that he was working harder in the restaurant than he had as a squeegee operator. My reaction to that is precisely what I was saying before. I did this guy a favor. I got him out of the streets, got him into a job. Maybe he’s not going to like it at first, the discipline of it is a little bit annoying, but hopefully, ultimately he’s going to realize, this is a much more productive and a much healthier way to lead his life.

Rush: Mrs. Clinton said, “We have a mayor who turns his back on the public schools.”

Giuliani: What I’m trying to do is to get people to fight to change a system that’s failing, as opposed to being a defender of the status quo which is what she is. The public school system in New York City is first and foremost a job protection system. It exists for the purpose of protecting the jobs of the people in the system. You can’t differentiate between the people who are doing a good job educating children and the people who are failing children. Their jobs come first. They all get paid the same money. There’s teacher tenure, so they’re all protected in the same way.

Take two teachers: One teacher is teaching in a very difficult school. That teacher is having tremendous success, kids are graduating, reading scores are going up. The other teacher is teaching and reading scores never go up, kids are dropping out and the teacher is a woeful failure. We have to treat both of those teachers the same way — because our system is a job protection system, not a school system. If you want to have a school system, you’ve got to be able to treat those teachers differently. You’ve got to be able to give merit pay to the teacher who’s doing a good job. You have to have more flexibility to remove the teacher who’s doing a bad job. Until we change that, simply putting in more money and new programs — which we do — is only going to be of marginal help. Accountability is what I’ve been fighting for.

What I’ve been fighting for is a system that is much more competitive, much more oriented toward rewarding performance. Ultimately — and this is where Mrs. Clinton and I do have a big philosophical difference — I believe there have to be more charter schools, there have to be more alternatives, and we should give poor parents the same choice that rich parents have. In Milwaukee, they allow the 15 percent poorest parents to have vouchers, and they can have the same choice that the richest parents have. Ultimately, choice and charter schools will make the public school systems much more competitive, much better and, ultimately, it will save them.

Rush: When I hear Mrs. Clinton speak, I don’t hear her say a word about what she’s going to do as a Senator. All I hear her say is what and who she cares about. But she is out there charging that you’re not saying what you’re going to do as a Senator. How do you translate all of the things that you have espoused in this interview, in terms of your philosophy and beliefs? How do you take that to the Senate as an agenda?

Giuliani: Just what we were talking about. I would be a strong advocate for a lot more alternatives in education if I were in the United States Senate. I would support expanding charter schools. I would support expanding choice programs like the program in Milwaukee. I would support trying to get local educational systems to allow parents to have much more of a role in the schools that their children go to. I’m not a defender of the status quo of the school system — which is why the teacher’s union strongly supports Mrs. Clinton and is very much an opponent of mine. If people need to know how I would vote and what approach I will take in the Senate, it comes out of the things that I’ve done as the Mayor.

The same thing is true on the economy. People need to know whether I would be in favor of cutting taxes, the answer is yes. I’d be in favor of cutting the income tax. I’d be in favor of cutting or eliminating the capital gains tax — but they don’t have to just guess at that. I’ve cut taxes in New York City by $2.4 billion, and no Mayor has come close to doing that.

Rush: Very true. I’ve noticed, looking at polling data, that Mrs. Clinton is surprisingly weakest in Manhattan among feminist women. I’ve read some quotes over the past months in The New York Observer and I’ve been stunned. A lot of these women say, “We resent Mrs. Clinton being held up as our icon and leader. She’s not our role model. We have our own achievements, independent of anybody. We didn’t attach ourselves to some guy in college, follow him along and then take over when he got where he was going. We’ve done it on our own.” Are you a little bit surprised that she’s getting such criticism from the New York feminist organizations?

Giuliani: I think the biggest problem that she has, and the one that ultimately is going to become a fatal flaw, is that she doesn’t have a legitimate claim on being a Senator from New York — either from living here or from anything that she’s done in public office.

Rush: No achievements.

Giuliani: There is no record from which she can say, “These are the things that I’ve done in the past and from that, you get a sense of what my philosophy is.”

Rush: Are you prepared to say that? Because, Mayor, you’re up against something tough. She’s “the girl.” You’re not supposed to criticize “the girl.” Even in 2000. This has got to be a really tough finesse job.

Giuliani: That’s true. The one thing you have to be very aware of with both of the Clintons and that is the thing they do best is to play victim. It’s something that we, meaning Republicans, may not understand. I think that was part of what happened during the whole impeachment proceeding. The minute you put them in the role of victim, somehow they are able to evoke a tremendous amount of sympathy from the press, a tremendous amount of sympathy from the public.

So what we try to do is to stick with issues and to explain what my philosophy is, what my approach is, what I would do, and ask people who agree with that to vote for me — and leave the criticism part basically to positions and issues. I’m in favor of reducing taxes, she’s largely in favor of increasing taxes. I’m in favor of a smaller federal government, she’s in favor of a larger federal government. I think, on foreign policy, we have tremendous differences. Elian Gonzalez, for instance.

Rush: What do you think about that?

Giuliani: I’ve had the same position on the Elian Gonzalez case from the day it started. I wrote to the Attorney General back in December and said, “You should give the boy status in the United States, make him either a citizen or a permanent resident of the United States, so that his case could be resolved in a family court and not by the Immigration and Naturalization Services.” This case should be in front of a Family Court judge who could, in-depth, examine what this father is all about. Is this father really free to express the views that he has? It’s hard for me to believe that any father wouldn’t want his child to grow up in a better circumstance than he’s in. America is a lot better circumstance than being in Cuba where you’re the property of the state.

Rush: He probably does, but he can’t say it. This guy’s phone calls to the kid all came from the Cuban Interest section. Everybody talked about that video with Elian being coached. If there was anybody being coached and hamstrung, it was the father.

Giuliani: It’s almost by definition. The Human Rights Watch says that Cuba is one of the most oppressive regimes. It’s the most oppressive regime in the western hemisphere and one of the most oppressive in the world. Now we’re taking at face value the comments of a father who lives in that system, in a very, very high-stakes political drama where Castro has to be basically orchestrating the whole thing.

Rush: Clinton cares about the rule of law for the first time in eight years. People are speculating there must be some sort of normalization deal that this kid washing ashore screwed up.

Giuliani: That’s really the worst part of it. I used to be in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service makes political decisions. That’s what it does. It makes decisions based upon foreign policy, diplomacy and politics. It does not make decisions based on what’s in the best interest of a child. The President and the Attorney General should have performed a role here of getting this decision out from under the Immigration and Naturalization Service and in the hands of a judge who could evaluate the best interest of the child including whether this child has an interest, including the one the mother wanted for the child, to grow up in a society in which the child can have freedom.

The thing that disturbs me the most about this case is how, to some extent, the idea of America has receded. My grandparents left their family in Italy so that their children and their children’s could grow up with a lot more opportunity than they had in Italy. Elian’s mother died for that reason. Somehow that isn’t having the impact on the American people that I think it would have had 20 and 30 years ago.

Rush: That’s because of pictures of his father carrying a six-month-old infant, which you know, he never does in Cuba. It’s all pictures, it’s all emotion. Jose Serrano was on “Meet The Press” and said, “Look, if you measure America by TVs and cell phones and video machines, yeah we’re better, but families are families.” He’s a member of Congress deciding that life in Cuba is better for somebody than in America.

Giuliani: It says that, at least to some extent, the ideals of America have deteriorated. The tremendous pull that democracy and the rule of law and growing up in a society that respects freedom of religion, that even respects individual freedom. One of the spokesmen for the Cuban Interest section said point blank that Elian Gonzalez is property of the state. That should have been a startling statement. We’re sending a boy back to a place where he actually, ultimately, doesn’t belong to his family, he belongs to the state, he belongs to Castro.

Rush: The Cold War is over. I don’t think people really have a comprehension of communism.

Giuliani: When I talk to young people, I realize that this may be another failing of our educational system: We haven’t taught the history of the 20th century and part of the history of the 20th century is the history of communism; it exists and it’s alive in Cuba right now under Castro.

Rush: What has surprised you the most since you decided to take on Mrs. Clinton and run for the Senate?

Giuliani: The positive surprise is the tremendous amount of support that exists for me. We’ve outraised her not quite two to one, but we’ve raised a lot more money than she has in small contributions from people averaging about a hundred dollars a person from about now, 200,000 people. The negative part: the continued media fascination with the Clintons and with their extremely surface approach to politics.

Rush: Has it surprised you that the fact that she’s a carpetbagger has not drawn more attention from the press?

Giuliani: Yes, it’s a much deeper issue than the press realizes with people. I think that there’s a real sense that this is not an authentic candidacy, that it doesn’t come from any desire to do particularly good things for the state of New York, that this is more about Mrs. Clinton than it is about any particular thing that she’s going to be able to do for the state.

The other thing that we will emphasize as the campaign moves along is the need that New York State has for a Republican Senator. The Senate is going to be Republican next year, whatever else happens. Our state is hurt very much because we don’t have a Republican Senator. So that’s a point we’re going to make very strongly, particularly in the parts of the state that are Republican.

Rush: Well, just know that we here at the EIB network are on your team. We’re going to be doing everything we can to get your truth out.