National / World Politics 24 Jan 2008 06:55 am
The Case for Rudy – 2 (a “must read”…)
The Case for Rudy 2
By David Frum
A little while ago, I met a Washington couple who took me aside to ask what they could do to help elect Rudy. I get asked this question a lot, but this couple was more than usually eager. I asked them why they liked Rudy so much, and they told me this story: In the first year of Rudy’s mayoralty, they were visiting New York to prepare for their daughter’s wedding in that city. They spent one afternoon with their daughter in a wedding boutique on upper Madison Avenue, supposedly one of the safer areas of the city. Shortly before closing time, the store’s buzzer rang. The store manager looked outside, saw two men in suits and ties, and made the decision to let them in. Big mistake. The men pulled out guns, demanded money and jewelry, and seized anything portable and valuable. On their way out the door, they shot both the man and the woman.
Both lived, but their injuries were extremely serious. You can imagine the rest: the 911 call, the ambulances, the rush to hospital, the doctors running through corridors, the surgery.
Here’s what is maybe a little different: a couple of hours after the surgery, then-new mayor Giuliani arrived to visit. He sat with the couple, asked compassionately about their wounds, promised them that the shooters would be caught. He gave them his private phone number and asked them to call anytime he could do anything for them. He spoke to the doctors and told them that the couple’s recovery was vital to the recovery of New York’s civic self-image. He called every day that the couple remained in hospital to check on their recovery.
The shooters were caught and sentenced. As for the Washington couple, they did (mostly) recover – and Mayor Giuliani attended the rescheduled wedding.
If anybody wants to know what real compassionate conservatism would look like, that story is it.
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