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.
Did Giuliani deserve such acclaim for his efforts on 9/11? His emergency command post – an eyrie with 50,000 sq ft of television monitors, plus a sofa bed for relaxing naps – proved to be useless since he had insisted on locating it high in one of the targeted towers; in addition, Kirtzman notes that rescue efforts foundered because Giuliani’s administration had equipped firefighters with high-priced radios that didn’t work. Escaping blame for his errors, he unsuccessfully schemed “to remain in office past the required end of his term” – a rehearsal for his later plots to save Trump’s presidency. He then monetised his renown by hiring himself out as a fixer for a rabble of foreign thugs, tricksters and oligarchs who, as Kirtzman remarks, resembled a round-up of Bond villains.
The biography is at its sharpest when examining the lifelong synergy between Trump and Giuliani. We now think of him as Trump’s lickspittle, but the balance of power once favoured Giuliani, whose antics at City Hall – twisting facts, scoffing at legal restraints, threatening reporters – were mimicked by Trump in the Oval Office. At a vaudevillian charity dinner in New York in 2000, Giuliani appeared on film in the pink-gowned, blond-wigged persona of a drag queen called Rudia. Trump slathered the vamp with randy compliments and plunged his nose into her prosthetic cleavage; the affronted Rudia shrilled “Oh you dirty boy!” and slapped his cheeky face.
In 2008, when Giuliani’s bid for the Republication presidential nomination woundingly failed, the seesaw swung the other way. Morose and woozy with booze, he went into hiding at Mar-a-Lago under Trump’s protection. He repaid the favour in 2016 by volunteering to mop up the mess left by Trump’s boasts about grabbing the “pussies” of starlets; after a day of embattled interviews, his reward was to have Trump snarl: “Man, Rudy, you sucked.” In 2020, Giuliani made it his mission to challenge Biden’s election victory, on one occasion sweatily ranting on camera while inky dye seeped from his hair and made him look like the melting waxwork of a ghoul. As he found, political and personal relationships are S&M games for Trump, who enjoys debasing and then discarding his acolytes. Giuliani was denied the cabinet post he craved, and his fees of $20,000 a day for time spent investigating nonexistent electoral fraud have gone unpaid; in return for his shysterism he has forfeited his licence to practise law in New York and is the subject of a criminal probe in Georgia.
Although Kirtzman emphasises the juvenile self-righteousness that made Giuliani hesitate between careers as a Catholic priest and a prosecutor, this moral zealot emerged from Brooklyn at its shadiest and most subterranean. His father was once arrested for loitering with immoral intent in a public toilet, and when the cops asked why he was kneeling he said he was practising deep bends to ease his constipation – quick thinking, worthy of a Jesuit or a casuistical attorney! Giuliani Sr aspired to be a boxer, but was disqualified from the ring because he blinked and squinted through thick specs; instead, he made his living as a burglar and was jailed for armed robbery. He also acted as an enforcer for his brother’s “vast loansharking and gambling operation”, settling debts with the aid of a baseball bat. Rudy smarmily insists that his father “taught him his most valuable lessons”, and he honours that legacy by keeping a baseball bat under the bed in each of his expensively secured homes. Is he preparing to repel intruders or simply itching to crack skulls?
Tragic heroes have the good grace to die as they hit the floor, but Giuliani remains comically indestructible, impervious to shame. In 2020, he was honey-trapped by Sacha Baron Cohen, who lured him into a rendezvous with an accomplice pretending to be Borat’s flirty teenage daughter and covertly filmed him sprawling on a hotel bed, his hand thrust down his pants in order – as he claimed – to tuck in his shirt. Last year, Giuliani grossed out the customers in an airport restaurant by shaving himself at his table, seasoning a bowl of lobster bisque and a plate of brownies with his stubble. First he lost his moral bearings, after which he mislaid his sense of decency and decorum.
Kirtzman begins by gazing up at the “skyrocketing trajectory” of a “brilliant man”. Giuliani’s third wife, watching him stagger unsteadily along with a cigar in one hand and a Scotch in the other, takes a less elevated view. “He was shitfaced,” she shrugs after she witnesses an embarrassing tumble. “He went down.” Rather than tragically falling from dizzy heights, Giuliani has simply collapsed, succumbing to his lust for money and fame while using the rusty remnant of his legal skills to justify malfeasance. Lurid notoriety is what we’ve come to expect or even demand of such public figures: they may be corrupting and chaotically wrecking our world, but are we not entertained?
• Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor by Andrew Kirtzman is published by Simon & Schuster (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
