Blustering demagogues such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have made politics the last and most dangerously lively of the performing arts. The state is now a stage, and those who strut and fret on it think of power as a licence for self-indulgence. Rudy Giuliani’s managerial style when he was mayor of New York pointed the way: as Andrew Kirtzman says in his biography, Giuliani replaced prudent governance with “over-the-top drama” and delighted in spectacularly “blowing things up”. Kirtzman’s phrase knowingly anticipates the scenario of 9/11, when al-Qaida operatives toppled the World Trade Center: ill-tempered and incendiary, Giuliani in his small way reigned through terror.
Chronicling Giuliani’s “rise and tragic fall”, Kirtzman picks apart the “hero narrative” that once exalted a man who these days seems so mentally befogged and physically seedy. His leadership on 9/11 made Giuliani seem “godlike”; one worshipful New Yorker upped the ante by gasping “He is God!”. He came to be known as “America’s mayor”, a stalwart guardian envied by communities everywhere, and during a global victory lap he received an honorary knighthood from the Queen. Off duty, he exchanged glory for glitz: after the investiture at Buckingham Palace, he schmoozed with Simon Cowell and Andrew Lloyd Webber in Richard Branson’s Babylonian roof-garden restaurant.
