Rudy's romance with Mexico

HOUSTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are disappointing as leaders among our presidential candidates. You would think the New Yorkers would have more to say about how we are going to live and work together in this continent. They, by default, are the nation's political spokespeople for immigrants. Ellis Island gives them the authority to represent the high road.Isn't our country the one with above-average ability to absorb foreignness and make it ours? Isn't New York The Big Apple because Spanish emigres referred to the place as La Gran Manzana? (The Spanish word manzana means both "apple" and "city block.")Clinton and Giuliani are the ones to remind us about the Irish, the Italians, the Russian Jews, and many other populations who represent people over there coming over here. And their proposals should reflect the difference between people crossing oceans and the ones with whom we share this continent.You would expect those insights to go to the nub of the issue. Instead we are getting fragged into a million pieces so that we lose perspective. These candidates could even become heroes -- hey, even worthy of nomination when a broader national outlook is proposed -- instead of running from it.Instead, they seem to run from enlightening us. They could benefit from Gene Kelly's words, "A good dancer is always ahead of the beat. He makes the music happen." Giuliani, whose presidential run is based on his reputation as a crime-fighter and the man in command on Sept. 11, is especially interesting. He has had a special relationship with Mexico City. After leaving office at the end of 2001, with executives from his administration, and Ernst and Young LLP, he formed Giuliani Partners to provide consulting services to cities and corporations. Mexico City, then under left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, contracted their services for $ 4.3 million. (Lopez Obrador ran for president in 2006 but lost the race by a fraction of one percent.) In October 2002, Giuliani's firm singled out Bernard B. Kerik, a partner and former N.Y.C. police commissioner and chief of the city's corrections department, as the team's key member. By March 2003, the first report, themed "zero tolerance" to crime, overviewed Mexico City's system, and pointed out deficiencies in operations and administrative procedures. By May of that year, however, Kerik was put in charge of reconstructing Iraq's police and jail system under provisional administrator Paul Bremer. Giuliani had to assuage concerns in Mexico City over whether his firm could provide the insightful, nuanced, probing quality recommendations they needed instead of boilerplate off-the-shelf solutions.Team Giuliani was hired when 64 percent of the Mexican public saw crime as their number one problem. Critics wondered whether the New Yorkers had the right understanding. "Zero tolerance" and traffic control are not the most direct response to express kidnappings. In December 2004, Mexico City's departing public security secretary Marcelo Ebrard reported about 70 percent of the recommendations were put into effect, the penal system was 80 percent and the police 55 percent on the modernization track. Today, Ebrard is that city's governor.That was the same month President Bush nominated Kerik for Homeland Security secretary, but a week later Kerik withdrew over questions about his nanny's tax and immigration status and claims about extramarital affairs. That same month Kerik resigned as CEO of Giuliani-Kerik LLC, an affiliate of Giuliani Partners. A year later, New Jersey officials said Kerik had abused his position as corrections commissioner in the 1990s and allegedly accepted bribes to do business with the city from a company with underworld ties. In November this year, Kerik was indicted on 14 federal counts related to tax and corruption offenses. Clearly, Team Giuliani knew the ins and outs of corruption -- an aspect of governing that has afflicted both NYC and Mexico DF. In no small way, coupled with household economics, it affects why people leave, legal niceties be damned. It is disingenuous to look to reform downwind from someone passing public-policy gas. Then again, with a checkered history like this, maybe it is better if everyone forget Rudy's romance with Mexico.(Josi de la Isla, author of "The Rise of Hispanic Political Power," Archer Books, 2003, writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3(at)yahoo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)