Transcript
FRED SIEGEL: Given the events in London, I could begin by talking about terrorism and Giuliani's early interest in terrorism dating back to 1985. I could also talk about Giuliani for president. We can do a little bit of that later.
But I want to take a different tack. I want to tell you first why I wrote the book and then talk about the problem of urban liberalism, what Giuliani meant for it, what's happened to New York and why it's a significant question for liberals nationally.
What made me write the book was a kind of fear. I noticed that David Dinkins was once again an honored guest at Gracie Mansion, given an endowed chair at Columbia, that people had forgotten what the early '90s were like in New York. And the way to summarize the early '90s is one anecdote. Betsy Gotbaum, who was a good Parks Commissioner, was standing in Central Park. It's 1993 and she's talking about improvements in Central Park. Cameras are rolling. She's in front of the lake. It's beautiful. And as she's speaking a dead body bobs to the surface of the lake.
This all reminded me of the Soviet joke thinking about this revisionism of the early '90s, when people were saying it was all the economy; Giuliani didn't do much. I heard Robert Rubin, who is otherwise an intelligent guy say this. I thought about the old Soviet joke. The quizzical man asked the commissar, he said, commissar, always certain about the future. I know it is always rosy. It's the past that's always changing. And that's what I'm worried about.
New York was the birthplace of modern liberalism—LaGuardia, the New Deal. And just as New York was the birthplace of modern liberalism, it really died there as a viable perspective in the 1990s.
Read the full transcript (PDF—142kb)