The New York Times-20080127-Giuliani as Mayor- A Look at the Darker Side- -Letter-

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Giuliani as Mayor: A Look at the Darker Side; [Letter]

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To the Editor:

In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price (front page, Jan. 22) deftly presents a portrait of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani that those of us who lived in this city through his pugilistic reign were aware of all along.

The fact that he is today running for the nation's highest office is actually frightening.

What is more frightening are the legions of would-be voters who remain ignorant of his crude and vengeful management style, his penchant for punishment and his inability to work collaboratively with his adversaries. Applied to politics on a national scale, this style would be nothing short of an autocracy.

After seven years of similarly arrogant and petty leadership that has devastated our country's reputation around the world, we can ill afford another president whose style of leadership can be summed up not just by the directive My way or the highway but, more accurately, My way, or else!

Joe BiermanNew York, Jan. 22, 2008

To the Editor:

My family of four would no longer be living in New York City were it not for the mayoralty of Rudolph W. Giuliani, who rescued the city from a flood of crime and street hassles that the prior administration mostly ignored.

How sad to realize that the man who did so much to restore New York to some modicum of sane living acted so vindictively toward legitimate critics, and even those ordinary people whose workaday concerns coincidentally conflicted with his own.

Rudy, you could've made us proud.

Mitch HorowitzNew York, Jan. 22, 2008