Rudy the Libertarian?

If you are going to tout a candidate as libertarian, I am given to understand that the candidate should have a first rate “libertarian resume”. I have been informed by Eric Dondero, whose own “libertarian resume” is said (by him) to be impressive, that Rudy Giuliani is “libertarian”. Although Eric doesn’t think much of folks’ using their own judgment (https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10883291&postID=1040062931335375543 ), I thought I would take a gander at old Rudy’s CV and how libertarian it is.

First off, I was going to give Rudy a plus on the libertarian ledger because of his draft dodging back during the Vietnam War. He bravely declined to be part of the federal government’s slave army, and he managed to avoid the draft thanks to a letter from his boss, a federal judge for whom Rudy was clerking. It’s hard to give Rudy credit for staying out of the slave army by sucking at the federal government’s teat as a civilian employee. I reckon the two cancel out from a libertarian perspective if I am to be as generous as I can.

After two years of clerking for the court, Rudy might have parlayed this experience into a legal job in the private sector as a productive member of society. Instead, he chose to remain a parasite on the taxpayers and work in the ironically named Justice Department. He worked his way down in the lowerarchy of the Office of the US Attorney to become chief of the Narcotics Unit. An enthusiasm for drug prohibition and a career as a bureaucrat are hardly indicative of a libertarian streak. Rudy was such a zealous bureaucrat that he landed a gig as Associate Deputy Attorney General.

He was parked at a big law firm during the Carter administration when he was displaced by Democrats at the patronage trough, but he was immediately brought back to Justice as Associate Attorney General when the GOP regained control of the spoils. He became US Attorney for the Southern District of New York where I recall his being a huge publicity hound. He was fond of the public “perp walk” when he had you arrested, but there was no equivalent publicity when he dropped charges. He was a drug warrior, among other things.

He was parked at some law firms after Reagan left office until he was elected mayor of New York City in which post he served two 4 year terms. From 1968, when he finished law school, to 2002 when he left the mayoral palace, he spent all but 9 years as a parasite on the taxpayers, hardly anything a libertarian would crow about. And his tenure as mayor is not regarded as a great flowering of individual liberty in the city. On the contrary, Rudy was an authoritarian prick. He was especially hard on sex workers and adult entertainment, and he was no friend of drug users. Marijuana arrests in NYC went from 720 in 1992 to over 60,000 in 2000.

Rudy got a lot of credit after the World Trade Center attack, and I got the impression that he believed that he had single handedly brought the city together in the wake of that tragedy. What a glory hound. I didn’t see Rudy running into any burning buildings or breathing a crapload of asbestos in the cleanup. One thing Rudy is good at is squeezing every ounce of attention and publicity out of a tragedy, and if he becomes President he will doubtless stand out in the role of publicity hound. There is nothing particularly libertarian about Rudy’s performance at the WTC.

Since Rudy left office, he has traded on his name and fame as a “security” consultant and investment advisor, although for the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone thinks Rudy knows anything in particular about either thing. I don’t know much about Rudy’s client list, except that it included the government of Venezuela, so for all I know he has worked tirelessly for personal freedom since leaving government employment. He wanted to be a Senator at one time, so he clearly wants another government gig.

Rudy doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would let the bloated powers of the presidency diminish on his watch. On the contrary, Rudy might turn out to be the last president ever elected.