Giuliani's pit-bull tenacity mirrors RFK's
mettle, says ex-aide to both men
BY BARTLE BULL
The new film "Bobby" and the launch of Rudy Giuliani's presidential exploratory committee have brought together two seemingly disparate figures in my own experience. Having served in 1968 as Robert Kennedy's New York campaign manager, and in 2000 as chairman of New Yorkers for Giuliani in his Senate race, I have thought often of their similarities.
Both approached politics as Catholic intellectuals, inclined to study a problem with open-minded mental rigor, then, once decided, to attack it with moral fervor and an intolerance of other views.
Both were lawyers and prosecutors, Kennedy as attorney general of the United States, Giuliani as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Both attacked organized crime and were unforgiving, tenacious adversaries.
Both let their prosecutorial instincts take them too far: RFK when he served summonses on the steel executives in their homes, Rudy when he had white collar defendants handcuffed on camera.
Physicality is important, and they shared it: the same short, trim, tight demeanor of body and face.
Both men were practical in their policies, not doctrinaire, and heavily criticized by both left and right. Today, RFK is a darling of the left. In 1968 he was their devil. The rabid, generally youthful, anti-war lefties denounced Bobby as ruthless and opportunistic, as a belated opponent of the Vietnam War.
Neither was a panderer. Not to political blocs, not to the polls and not to the press.
Rudy Giuliani hates black people. He refused to meet with black politicians until an innocent man lay murdered in the street by police.
Giuliani repeated refused to meet with black communities. He is a hateful man who turned on his own family and openly paraded his mistresses around to insult and humilate his wife and children.
This is an obscene comparison, a cruel and grossly unfair one. Like comparing Kenny G to Miles Davis.
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