Where can New Yorkers learn about how their government works, beyond what the textbooks say? For a generation, one answer was clear: Read The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro’s massive study of the never-elected, but enormously consequential, Robert Moses.

Now, there’s a new must-read on New York government and politics. It’s The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life. Fred Siegel’s book is a third as long as Caro’s, but equally important in the story it tells of an individual leader and the political culture he shaped.

Having served as mayor of New York for eight action-filled years, Rudy Giuliani is known to millions of Americans for his actions on a single day. Brilliant leadership on and after September 11, 2001, made him one of the most respected political figures in the country, even four years later.

But Siegel makes a strong case that Giuliani’s response to the World Trade Center attacks was only the most obvious achievement by the leader of a city many had concluded was ungovernable.

Most importantly, Giuliani reawoke New Yorkers to"the genius of American life." That, he taught, is to be found somewhere beyond the government programs that too many had come to expect as a birthright since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia.

"Before Giuliani, New York politics had been mostly about striking caring poses in the course of paying off interest groups," Siegel writes."Liberal mayors like Lindsay and Dinkins spoke endlessly of what the city owed the poor, but they delivered rising rates of crime and welfare. Theirs was the sovereignty of words over deeds."

By contrast,"Giuliani's aim in trying to transform the political culture of the city was to make New York ‘more like the rest of America.’ He self-consciously replaced Lindsay’s and Dinkins’ rhetoric of compassion, generosity and multi-culturalism – which in practice translated into more social service jobs, higher taxes and ethnic strife – with talk of work, self sufficiency and a shared Americanism."

Those latter phrases are more often associated with Republican politicians than with Democrats. But Siegel, a Democrat who has advised Bill Clinton, points out that leaders of his party such as the former President, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley Jr. also succeeded by promoting such traditional values.

"Under Giuliani," Siegel says, the ideal of upward mobility"once again became the defining credo of a city whose policies and politics had been based on the assumption that the pathological was routine."

Attacking urban pathology began with attacking crime. It's true that crime rates fell nationwide during the 1990s. But Siegel shows convincingly how leadership-driven demands for better results, and effective performance measures (the now-famous CompStat program that illustrated daily shifts in crime patterns), made the Big Apple a national leader in crime reduction.

Welfare reform was another key step. Giuliani was among the first great champions of an old/new ethos that, as Siegel writes,"work is the best social policy." (In New York City, of course, many self-proclaimed defenders of the poor said such a position was heartless and mean-spirited. But I know a Catholic priest, who has labored tirelessly for more than 40 years to help the addicted and homeless, whose philosophy is much the same.)

Everywhere in America, the difference between effective and failing government services matters most to the poor and needy. They depend more than their wealthier neighbors on government – witness those who suffered most as a result of the ineffective response to Hurricane Katrina. By attacking crime and reforming welfare, Giuliani made life noticeably better for the poorest New Yorkers.

There were other important successes, Siegel writes: reforming the City University, setting the stage for reform of the public-school system, and driving the mob from the garbage industry.

Then there was Giuliani’s housing program, which emphasized returning abandoned houses to private owners rather than expanding government programs. Deborah Wright, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, had to overcome"white liberals (who were) ideologically opposed to private ownership." An African-American originally appointed by Mayor David Dinkins, Wright recalled,"I can't tell you how brave it was" for Giuliani to support a capitalist approach to helping lower-income and minority residents acquire their own homes.

Fred Siegel wrote the book with his son Harry, now editor of the New York Press. Neither is the type to engage in hagiography. The book points out that, in the post-Giuliani era,"the power of the interest groups remains largely intact and so do the city’s ongoing budget difficulties." Giuliani’s own book Leadership is described as"a turgid read."

Still, Siegel leaves no question as to his overall assessment.

"Giuliani achieved his success in New York by living up to Churchill's maxim that courage is the most important political virtue because it guarantees all the others."

Those who believe New York State government badly needs reform might take some comfort from the experience of the state’s largest city. If reform can make it there, just maybe, it can make it anywhere. Even in Albany.

Robert Ward is director of research for The Public Policy Institute of New York State, the research affiliate of The Business Council of New York State. He is author of New York State Government: What It Does, How It Works (Rockefeller Institute Press, 2002).

Robert B. Ward
Director of Research
The Public Policy Institute/
The Business Council of New York State, Inc.
152 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12210
518.465.7511
fax 518.432.4537
bob.ward@bcnys.org