Rudy Giuliani is not Jimmy Walker. His fiercest enemies have never accused him of corruption. He's not a thief. As a public man, his most grievous sins have been sins of manners. It's absurd to blame him for what happened to Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo, but he is absolutely responsible for the callous way he handled those terrible events. Across the seven years and five months of his mayoralty, Giuliani has acted as if simple grace was a sign of weakness.

This apparently invincible clumsiness — this terminal absence of grace — has caught up to Giuliani now in the vulgar spectacle of his unraveled marriage. Jimmy Walker was in Europe when his long-estranged wife, at his urging, finally divorced him in a Florida courtroom. A few days later, he married Betty Compton. This was all done with discretion, far from the flashbulbs. There were no children involved. No demands for alimony. And no public savagery from lawyers.

A Fading Image

The natty, fun-loving, wisecracking image of Jimmy Walker was already fading when he vanished into his three-year exile in Europe with the woman he loved. To be sure, many New Yorkers still had enormous affection for him; my Aunt Rose grieved for "Our Jimmy" into the 1950s. But for most people in Depression-ravaged New York, he quickly became an embarrassing memento of the wild American ride of the 1920s. By 1933, there were much bigger stories in the world. Franklin D. Roosevelt was rallying a broken nation with the New Deal, Fiorello LaGuardia was rousing City Hall, and Adolph Hitler and his uniformed gangsters had come to power in Germany. As Humphrey Bogart put it later in "Casablanca": "The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Giuliani has one huge advantage over Jimmy Walker: He will not leave City Hall stained by charges of corruption. He retains some moral authority and with a little more than seven months left in power, can use that time to take care of unfinished business. He can give up all this nonsense about building sports stadiums with taxpayers' money. Instead, he should swiftly get contracts and pay raises to the cops and the schoolteachers, two groups of city employees who have given more to New York than any owner of a baseball team. This could be done without sneers or tears. That is, it could be done with that form of restraint called grace.

A Worthy Goal

More important, as the mayor of New York he could become the national spokesman for a huge federal drug rehabilitation program, one prepared to spend $50 billion each year for the next decade. For the next seven months, Giuliani could hammer away on this issue in every public forum, from the halls of Congress to CNN, drawing on his real-world experience as a prosecutor and a big-city mayor. He could tell George W. Bush and the Republicans to forget about the dumb missile defense system until they first deal with the demand side of the drug culture. He could explain why billions must be spent for treatment centers, doctors, therapists and job training, a massive task that only the federal government can do. He could make the case better than anyone else that drugs are a greater threat to national security than any rogue state.

Giuliani shouldn't worry about the political consequences of exposing the current Bush proposals for rehab as a pathetic, underfunded fraud. After all, he must know that he has no realistic political future with the faith-based, family-values Republicans. Once he leaves office, they will work hard to cast him into oblivion. Ask Newt Gingrich.

None of this can happen, of course, while the attention of the city and the nation is focused on the mess at Gracie Mansion. This chapter of Giuliani's sentimental education is being played out in public, and treated as bizarre comedy. Comedians get cheap laughs with the tale. Cartoonists make offerings each morning to the gods of sarcasm. Citizens giggle and snicker. And poor Giuliani walks naked among the citizenry, proclaiming his undying love for Judith Nathan, while finding himself incapable of uttering a single word of sympathy toward his children. Grace. The problem is grace.

But it's still within his power to control this mess. He could begin by canning the lawyer who has compounded Giuliani's problems. This kind of divorce is best left to graying older men, whispering in the oak-paneled offices of white-shoe law firms. They sit down with the opposition lawyers, write numbers on yellow pads and come to a settlement. They see the law as a form of conciliation, not combat.

Game Plan

At the same time, Giuliani should be preparing for his time as a private citizen. Here he could take a hint from Jimmy Walker. When Giuliani leaves, he will have a $3 million book contract in his pocket. That means he can live anywhere on the planet. And he can live in a way that brings him some degree of happiness. Perhaps he could help himself, and the city, by sending his woman off to find a great good place. The kind of place that Betty Compton found for Jimmy Walker. She could take seven months to find it, removing herself from all forms of scrutiny, while Rudy tries to say his farewell with grace.

Maybe the great good place for Rudy Giuliani and Judith Nathan is a villa in a town like Positano, Italy. Rudy could bathe each morning in the healing sun of the Mediterranean. He could watch gulls careening through the sky. He could grow a beard and read Dante Alighieri in cafes. He could listen to Verdi at breakfast. Food, music, poetry and the sun: the essentials of life. Under their spell, and in the company of his woman, even Rudy Giuliani might shake off the scar tissue of a lifetime.

The kids could visit each summer and learn Italian and go out with their father on fishing boats at dawn. In a different season, they could drive together to Milan and hear opera in La Scala. And perhaps he could even write a true book, full of self-scrutiny and regret, instead of the usual ghostwritten bloated pamphlet produced by politicians who think they are still players.

But basically, after a long hard time, Rudy Giuliani would be learning at last how to live, with humility and grace. It is never too late.

Original Publication Date: 5/21/01 New York Daily News