Rudy the Dragon Slayer? Not Quite

Rudy Giuliani's campaign pitch presents him as nothing less than the savior of New York, the only man tough enough to tame the big bad city. Not surprisingly, not all New Yorkers buy it, writes Chris Smith of New York. “It’s insulting to every New Yorker that he goes around the country talking as if he thinks he was the animal tamer and we were the animals,” says former Mayor Ed Koch.

Examining Giuliani's legacy, Smith finds plenty of places where Rudy's pitch is "more myth than reality." Giuliani did, in fact, make an "enormous" contribution to the city's recovery, he writes, but more so in attitude than policy. Many of his bragging points, crime in particular, were the result of national trends largely out of his control. (More Rudy Giuliani stories.)