How It's Done

GFR flags Michael Cooper's stunningly informative New York Times article on how Rudy Giuliani's trying to fool people:

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.

Even the headline-writer delivered, giving us: "Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again".

How here's the bad news. It's striking to read a story like this, and Cooper and the Times deserve credit for doing it. But the world really needs more. As Cooper himself notes, Giuliani says this stuff over and over again and so what's needed is for campaign coverage to regularly reflect the regular misstatements that candidates use, until it ceased to be worth their while to keep making them.

Comments

Murders actually averaged about 1,500 per year for the 30 years preceding Giuliani's first election. That's lower than the 1,800 to 1,900 he cited, but not that much lower. God only knows there's plenty of things to criticise him for, I'm not so sure as this would be a particularly good choice.

Posted by Peter | November 30, 2007 10:36 AM

so what's needed is for campaign coverage to regularly reflect the regular misstatements that candidates use, until it ceased to be worth their while to keep making them.

Holding my breath, not.

I think the "Shag" scandal that Josh Marshall is pushing at TPM is what's going to tank him. Cheating on your second wife with your future third wife on the tax payer's dime doesn't strike me as a winning position for the Republican base.

Posted by DanF | November 30, 2007 10:47 AM

Oh ... and I should add, I don't think it matters if the MSM carries the shag story or not. I'm sure a whisper campaign is already in the works buy the other GOP candidates.

Posted by DanF | November 30, 2007 10:50 AM

I said this rather glibly under a previous post, but how can you not count the 9-11 deaths as violent crimes? Not much a mayor can do about protecting airspace, but clearly some non-zero fraction of the deaths could have been avoided were it not for botched emergency preparation, response, or communication.

And study of liberal cities that doesn't have Madison, WI (pop 200k) in the top 25 is clearly flawed.

Posted by Matt B | November 30, 2007 11:02 AM

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong.

I never thought I'd read a mainstream news story that contained a sentence like that about a major presidential candidate; well done.

Although I wonder how much of this is driven by the fact that the NY Times is extremely familiar with Rudy and is therefore more comfortable bringing him down. I'd be interested to see a similar attack on Romney's flips or Fred Thompson's supply-sider nonsense.

Posted by right | November 30, 2007 11:03 AM

Although I wonder how much of this is driven by the fact that the NY Times is extremely familiar with Rudy and is therefore more comfortable bringing him down.

I think that's close, but not quite it. I suspect all of the New York papers feel (in some cases rightfully) that they are the authoritative record on what happens in NYC, including during the Giuliani years, and so if Rudy is going to go around basing his campaign on that record, they have a special duty to check him. (Of course, the Post and the Sun are too politically compromised to do much on this.)

Posted by Glenn | November 30, 2007 11:09 AM

I'd guess that there are quite a few NYT reporters who know all about Rudy. More so than the WP where, e.g., you'd find lots of reporters who know all about Marion Barry.

Posted by MattF | November 30, 2007 11:17 AM

Would it kill them to use the word "lies"?

Posted by Anthony Damiani | November 30, 2007 11:18 AM

Lies are only lies if the public admits it to themselves that they realize they're lies. Rudy will continue to get away with his misstatements because the public buys into the myth Rudy has created. The public WANTS Rudy to be the candidate he is portraying. Some women honestly believe it when telling the policeman their husband hasn't been beating on them. They are in such an emotional fog, so twisted with doubt, insecurity and fear that they wall off the abuse in order to continue in the relationship. Americans are in a similar state of mind, relentlessly told the only chance for civilization's (and their) survival is to stick with a rabid, neocon preemptive warrior. Rudy touts himself as the most rabid of the bunch. He'll get through various scandals between now and the election, granted a free pass by everyone hoping for the continued slaughter and oppression of brown people the world over.

Posted by steve duncan | November 30, 2007 11:20 AM

Do I sense a feeding frenzy slowly beginning to build? As an reformed journalist I can say that any political reporter worth his/her salt has to be SALIVATING over this guy. This is what they live for and meme that could develop out of this -- Rudy is a liar who used city resources for his infidelity -- could prove devastating to his campaign. Think how close to sinking Clinton Jennifer Flowers came AND the damage to Gore of being labeled a "serial exaggerator." Put those two together and watch out. And if those don't sink him, there are dozens of other scandals just waiting to be let out of the closet.

Posted by JZ | November 30, 2007 11:46 AM

It's not a lie if you believe it.
- George Costanza

Posted by BlueStreak | November 30, 2007 11:47 AM

I'm quite sympathetic to Rudy, so that colors my interpretation of the piece, but this looks like pretty weak tea.

The claim that spending went down 7% is pretty clearly dishonest, and I'm considering the hotel tax story a lie, simply because the jerk is trying to defend supply side, and I know he doesn't believe in that nonsense.

The rest of them are small exaggerations or poor use of statistics, and while not an advertisement for his honesty, seem to me pretty venial sins on the part of a politician. (Comparable to John Edwards' story in the last election about the little girl who couldn't afford a coat.)

I can't argue that Rudy is perfect, but given the strength of his record, which even the corrected stats agree is very good, I'm not convinced he'd make a bad president. Honesty is important, but it's in short supply, and competence is more important.

Posted by heedless | November 30, 2007 11:54 AM

".....if those don't sink him, there are dozens of other scandals just waiting to be let out of the closet."

Posted by JZ | November 30, 2007 11:46 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JZ, as a former journalist you surely must realize scandals only sink (or come close to sinking) Democrats. Tom DeLay marshalled entire swaths of Texas law enforcement, including airplanes, simply to round up recalcitrant Democrats needed to establish a quorum. Any penalty? No. Rove exposing CIA operatives: free pass. Libby lying about the same: commuted. Weinberger and Richardson up to their ears in criminal activity in Central America: pardoned. The list is endless. America is prepared to believe the worst about the dirty fucking hippies (anyone to the left of Bill Kristol). They ignore conservative miscreants because they're children of God (and a Christian God at that, goddamn it!) and because they want to kill heretics and maybe a few of the dirty fucking hippies while they're at it.

Posted by steve duncan | November 30, 2007 12:08 PM

Giuliani is toast. As far as the consequences of GOP scandals, look who's running Congress and who's setting unpopularity records in the White House. It's never as clear-cut as justice and karma demands...

Posted by American Citizen | November 30, 2007 3:19 PM

"....look who's running Congress and who's setting unpopularity records in the White House..."
Posted by American Citizen ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I see a Congress perfectly willing to pour 50 billion$$ at a clip into an undeclared, preemptive war started and perpetuated by a bunch of nutjob neocons. I see a Congress backsliding on the investigation of crimes by the same nutjob neocons. I see a Congress submitting to the not-so-gradual erosion and elimination of the 4th Amendment. You tell me, who's running Congress?

Posted by steve duncan | November 30, 2007 3:39 PM

Here's Rudy called on a less prominent, but often repeated, lie. (http://blogs.govexec.com/fedblog/2007/11/giuliani_the_slasher_returns.php)

Giuliani The Slasher Returns
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, November 29, 2007 | 10:17 AM

Rudy Giuliani was at it again last night in the CNN-YouTube Republican debate. Asked what he would do to reduce the national debt, he once more took the opportunity to flog his pet proposal to slash federal spending and the federal workforce. Here's what he said:

I think you have to do across-the-board spending cuts like Ronald Reagan did -- 5, 10 percent per civilian agency. It should be done right now, actually. President Bush should do it to strengthen the dollar. We should commit not to rehire half of the civilian employees that will retire. That's 42 percent of the federal workforce that will retire in the next 10 years. Don't rehire half of them. Use technology -- one person doing the job of two or three. Every business has done it; the government has to do it.

Isn't it about time somebody started calling him on this stuff? Such as:

* Nobody knows how many federal employees actually will retire in the next 10 years. That 42 percent is merely a projection of people likely to retire based on estimates that have proven less than fully accurate in the past.

* Is Giuliani really in favor of a haphazard cut to federal operations based on who happens to retire? So if FEMA gets an unusually high number of retirements, he's fine with cutting our disaster response capability and potentially leaving excess capacity elsewhere?

* Government, just like the businesses Giuliani touts, already has replaced hundreds of thousands of workers with technology. Bill Clinton proudly claimed credit for slashing nearly 400,000 jobs during his administration, and agencies spent billions of dollars on technology (and contract workers) to continue to meet their missions. (By the way, does anybody think the federal government improved as a result?) Since George W. Bush took office, thousands of jobs have been added back, but mostly in the homeland security and defense areas. Does Mr. 9/11 really think that those are the jobs that we need to eliminate?

As I've said before, issues like these are simply too important to let candidates slide by with glib promises.

Posted by DR | November 30, 2007 3:54 PM

I think it's a really sad reflection of all this that the Post decided to start a "Fact Check" feature on their website as some sort of goofy novelty side-item, like the fashion police or something. Uh, dumbasses, shouldn't EVERY STORY YOU PUBLISH involve a fact check?

Posted by Jake H. | November 30, 2007 4:57 PM

Chris Matthews is gonna attack Rudy every day over these lies. Right? Afterall, he went after Gore over much less.

Posted by Comment | November 30, 2007 5:54 PM

I have to file a dissent on this one. Not as a Rudy supporter but on the assumption that everyone seems to be making that because the NYT is talking about numbers and the wapo was talking about rumors one deserves the pulitzer and the other should be boycotted. The problem is larger. The problem is that a kind of editorialistic (word?) cynicism has crept into our reporting. Objectivity has taken a hit as a result. Knight Ridder has run a couple of pieces that I think set the bar. Where they present a statement by a public figure then fact check and publish their result. I don't understand why journalists don't understand that the public would be greatful if they did nothing else. But facts are hard, I guess, and speculation is easy, and given the sheer volume of tv and internet space that has to be filled, speculation wins the day, even on the best sites like tpm. the fact is factcheck shouldn't have to exist because journalists whether they are talking about manipulation of numbers or memes should be sticking to the facts. if anyone has any suggestions about where I could find that kind of thing I would be very grateful.

Posted by JC | November 30, 2007 9:33 PM