Tragic Fall

 

If Rudy Giuliani was a tragic figure, in the traditional meaning of that term, then his "flaw" was his intense lust for power and relevance, which, when increasingly untethered from traditional norms and human relationships, led him to end his career pursuing his ambition as an acolyte of Donald Trump and a promoter of delusional conspiracy theories (e.g., Ukraine) and the 2020 "Big Lie."

CNN's series What Happened to America's Mayor? continued last night with episodes 3 and 4. Episode 3 started on 9/11, when Giuliani, who was then at the end of his term and had become someone from whom the city was already more or less read to move on, suddenly got a new lease on political life and became "America's Mayor." Yet, even in his well deserved moment of political and reputational stardom, inklings of the once and future Giuliani were evident in his ill-advised (but thankfully unsuccessful) attempt to upend the normal political order and prolong his time in office.

Post-mayor, Giuliani seemed healthy again, had his third wife and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, and (although out of office) occupied a national political platform, from which to parlay the illusion that successfully having steered the city through it moment of greatest crisis, qualified someone as an expert in national security (not unlike the more commonly invoked illusion that success in business qualifies one to be president). But he totally misread the political situation in the 2008 Republican primaries and failed dramatically in his presidential bid.

From here the road would lead seemingly inexorably to hitching his hopes for some sort of political relevance to Trump's unexpectedly rising star. The program highlights how Giuliani appears to have seen Trump as his vehicle to channel anger into power. (The program also reminds the viewer that, as a fellow New Yorker, Giuliani had to have known better than to imagine that Trump was qualified to be president.) 

Thus, the final episode starts with the 2016 campaign and Giuliani's devoted allegiance to Trump even when others wavered. Interestingly, we learn about Giuliani's personal resentment against Joe Biden, which may have contributed to his obsession with Biden and Ukraine. The program makes a plausible case that the Ukraine fiasco, which led to Trump's first impeachment, might never have happened without Giuliani's involvement.

Then came the 2020 election and its aftermath, when Giuliani played such a prominent part in feeding Trump's delusional response to the election. And thus both those outer-borough guys who had advanced so far beyond expectations ended up trashing their legacies.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, in De Regimine Principum (Book I, chapter3), noted that there is a greater disregard of the common good in an oligarchy than in a democracy, and even greater harm in the tyranny that seeks the satisfaction of one person than in oligarchy. If the ordinary Republican party represents the damage done by oligarchy, the deviation into Trumpism was even more destructive to the common good of the country.  The lesson of "America's Mayor" is how easily this can happen.