It's Not About Mayor at All

Jimmy Breslin

October 2, 2001

Firefighter Stephen Bellson was in the water at Rockaway on the Tuesday morning when people on the shoreline began yelling about the World Trade Center. Bellson was out of the water and into clothes and driving madly to Manhattan. He arrived at the World Trade Center just in time to get killed.

He didn't need any mayor of the city to summon him to his job. He needed no phone call, beeper or politician on television announcing plans. He needed only the class of the working man of the city.

Yesterday at the United Nations, Rudolph Giuliani was speaking to the General Assembly. First of all, he was flat and he had about as much stature for a world appearance as a seagull. He was there because the United Nations is as gullible and silly as American newscasters and believe that Stephen Bellson, and the entire city, ran to the flames because of Giuliani's magnetic leadership.

One who died with Bellson, Mike Weinberg, had been signing in at the Forest Park golf course when he saw the fire on television. He drove to Manhattan and got there in time to be crushed when the two tower collapsed. He was there without being requested by the mayor.

Also in the water at Rockaway that day was an iron worker named O'Grady. He, too, came out of the water and went to Manhattan where he knew they would need him to get any heavy work done in looking for survivors in the wreckage.

There was no call from a mayor. There was only the calling of his people, the working class of New York. It was the same with Timothy Haskell, who finished a tour with Rescue 18 and was on his way home when he heard about the explosion. He called his girlfriend at 9:04 a.m. and told her he was going back. They found his body on the first Saturday of searching. His brother, Thomas, is missing. In all conversations at the wake and funeral in Seaford, nobody said the two brothers went to the catastrophe for any reason other than their service to their people. No Giuliani.

On that first day, Giuliani's bunker in the sky, built with a fortune of money and touted as bombproof, germproof, attack-proof, went and so did the building with it. There was no Giuliani for hours. He did tell television cameras that he nearly died.

The initial hours had the city in the hands of fire fighters and cops and construction workers and medics. They came on their own and if the city was being saved, they were doing it.

After that, Giuliani was on television constantly. As he was calm and had enough facts and statistics to appear informed, he was an asset.

Anything past that is smoke and mirrors and I ought to know because I coined the phrase.

But this time it was effective as all hell. He told the world that the city sat on his shoulders. He had President Bush introducing him to a joint session of the Congress in Washington. Jacques Chirac of France called him "Rudy the Rock. Tony Blair of England extolled him.

He became as dizzy as anything we've ever had around here. He said he wanted to stay as mayor for three months or he would get term limits thrown out and he would stay for four more years.

It was so insane that one guy saying "No -- Fernando Ferrer -- practically ended it.

He says that the transition period is normally very, very difficult, but in this case it is so hugely very, very difficult that it cannot be done without at least three more months and maybe 30. Giuliani hasn't moved one piece of steel from the old Trade Center site. He has only gone on television and walked people around the wreckage. But the transition cannot be done without him, he said, and it takes a lot of time.

In 1945, Harry S. Truman, vice president of the United States, was having a drink of whiskey in an office on the first floor of the Capitol building with Speaker Sam Rayburn. On the phone, he was asked to come to the White House immediately. Something told him to run. He ran alone through the Capitol and out to a car. He had no Secret Service entourage. The chauffeur drove him to the White House. He went upstairs and was told that Franklin Roosevelt had died and he was President. It was about 5:15 p.m. He was sworn in by 7, was told about the atom bomb, signed an order, called a friend to tell him the poker game was off and went to his apartment on Connecticut Avenue.

He had a turkey sandwich and a glass of milk. He called his mother in Missouri and told her not to worry. By 9:30 p.m., he was asleep.

Rudolph Giuliani says he needs at least three months before the city government he is sure he owns can be taken over by somebody else, even if they are elected and supposed to be in office on Jan. 1. He has to have press conferences.

In the end he has no legal right for anything he wants. And he has no moral right to boast and preen in the presence of the life and death of New Yorkers like Stephen Bellson and Mike Weinberg and the Haskell brothers and the thousands of others who were working early and honestly when their lives were ended.

To talk of yourself at a time like this is low class.