Too bad that voice is so hard to find in Giuliani’s just-released “Leadership’’ (Talk Miramax Books). Instead of Rudy, New York’s greatest mayor, we hear mostly from Rudy, would-be Management Guru. The dust jacket says the book is for “anyone who has to run anything”–in effect, a calling card for his new career running his Giuliani Partners consulting firm. But as a management book, it’s not worth the price of admission. His main principles, summarized in the preface, sound like Career Day advice. “Surround yourself with great people. Have beliefs and communicate them. See things for yourself. Set an example.’’ There are several more, but you’ve heard them before.
Throughout the book, Giuliani tries to pass off common sense as insight. He begins his second chapter extolling the virtues of the “morning meeting’’ (the quotation marks are his), helpfully explaining that it’s a forum in which the people who needed to reach him “knew that their concerns could be funneled in an orderly way through their representatives at the meeting; and I could ensure that my deputies and commissioners were working off the same page and could carry a coherent message back to their staffs.’’ Who knew? And later: “Making the right choices is the most important part of leadership.’’ He manages to give everyday life a new spin. He writes that he always likes to call his companion, Judith Nathan, himself–or at least take the phone after a staffer dials–even for minor things. He calls this “our own private ritual.''
The book is really a failure of form over function. To fulfill his mission of writing a leadership book, he uses his principles as a framework for stories of his life as mayor, U.S. attorney, even as a kid. But all we really want is to hear him talk as he might over a long dinner, and tell stories from which we can glean our own lessons–without his diagramming them for us (another book is apparently coming–possibly about crimefighting). There are moments when the book sparkles, though, particularly when he describes the days after the attacks. And his public remarks from those days still resonate. There are funny touches, too. He describes his first sit-down dinner after days of scarfing junk food on the go after the attacks. Everyone at the dinner noted that it was the first time all week he had used a knife and fork. And to this day, Rudy writes, Tom Von Essen, the former fire commissioner, says “Oh, look how fancy’’ whenever he sees Giuliani eating with utensils. Forget Rudy unplugged. Rudy unforked would be better reading. He’s too fancy here.
