Monday, October 29, 2007

Rudy as King

Josh Marshall over at TPM did a piece today on a bit of history that had slipped my mind. You, however, may remember that after 9/11, when the Rudy Giuliani was scheduled to leave office due to his final term expiring, he attempted to stay in office beyond that date. As Marshall puts it:

To remind everyone, not long after 9/11, as Rudy's term of office was coming to an end, he suggested and briefly pushed for being allowed to remain in office past his term on the argument that in the aftermath of 9/11 his leadership was indispensable and that the new mayor would perhaps have a period of apprenticeship under Rudy to come up to speed on running the city.

What it all comes down to is that I'm not sure there's any example of an elected official simply trying to extend his term of office beyond the legally-sanctioned period on the basis of an alleged emergency simply on the argument that he's indispensable, as Rudy did just after 9/11.

I remember thinking at the time that that was the moment when post-9/11 Rudy really jumped the now-proverbial shark. Rudy, you remember, had been set to leave office a pretty unpopular mayor. He'd just had cancer, dropped out of the senate race, was in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. 9/11, for once the phrase makes sense, changed everything. People who'd never liked him credited him for inspiring leadership in the hours and days after 9/11. But he just couldn't bow out with grace. He had to try to stay in office longer. Even in his moment of greatest triumph, he couldn't resist being who he was.

Marshall had searched for other similar examples of this type of action in American history. While there were examples that patently didn't fit this mold, this was the only one involving an election that no one contested and that everyone thought was above board. To see links to the other, non-conforming examples, follow the links above.

29 October 2007

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