My former youth pastor, now a bishop in the ELCA, gave me a copy of Rudy Giuliani’s book Leadership as an ordination gift. In light of current events, this may seem to have been an odd choice… but remember in 2003 when I was ordained, the whole world was still reeling from the horrors of 9/11, and Giuliani’s steady and empathetic leadership during and after really did establish him as “America’s mayor.”
Also kind of hard to imagine in 2022, but in 2001 Giuliani endorsed Democrat candidate for mayor Michael Bloomberg. Oh how times have changed.
It’s been 20 years since I read the book, so my memory of it is a bit foggy, but on the other hand I remember quite a bit more than other books I read twenty years ago.
It’s always stuck with me that he wrote about laying out a business suit at midnight after evening events so he could rise and be early and ready for the morning meeting he required daily of staff. An analysis of the function of the daily meeting was a core leadership lesson in the book.
Quite a few of his actual leadership maxims aren’t really that original: surround yourself with great people, have beliefs and communicate them, set an example, prepare relentlessly, underpromise and overdeliver. But somehow they stick with you more because they are delivered by the mayor who led NYC after 9/11.
However, what I find remarkable today is how far Giuliani has fallen away from his own best wisdom. Giuliani is by any account a lying, sleazy, manipulative, corrupt mess. We now know this week that his was the principle voice encouraging Donald Trump to announce victory in the race against Biden (an election they knew they had lost). It was an inebriated Giuliani who helped Trump propagate the Big Lie and forge a strategy to steal the election.
It’s not just that Giuliani has kind of fallen away from the best principles outlined in his book. No, he’s become a living and breathing example of the worst kind of leadership. We have examples of him showing up for important hearings desperately under-prepared. He repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. He literally has no beliefs (other than perhaps a desperate sheer will to power). He surrounded himself with some of the worst people. And he’s such an awful example of how to be a human he even gets a very compromising and disturbing cameo in the recent Borat film.
So what should I make of this as a pastor, now twenty years into this call, given that I received his book on leadership at my ordination?
Well, I’m reminded of the work of Terry Walling on the phases of leadership and his emphasis on “ending well.” He says that only one in three Christian leaders “finishes well.” If you review the stories of older men in the Old Testament, for example, you realize very few of them ended well. For example, the very wise Solomon at the end of his life presides over a nation splitting apart by civil war, and he turns away toward false gods (1 Kings 11:4-9). Saul, once the anointed of god, spends his final years in paranoid focus on David. Aaron, Moses’ right-hand man, leads the people into the worship of idols during Moses’ brief absence up on a mountain.
And so on… Jehu, Joash, etc. In fact, there are more examples of people ending poorly than ending well in the biblical texts.
I guess what this teaches me, if I’m willing to receive it, is that past accomplishments and wisdom are not guarantee of increased wisdom. Although we sometimes believe our elders have greater wisdom through their experience, it’s actually not necessarily the case that those who are older are wiser than those who are young. I personally know many older adults who are incredibly immature. So do you. And I know many children with wisdom beyond their years. So do you.
This also teaches me that I can learn something from someone who had wisdom for a time but then drifted from it. We talk about this a lot when analyzing literature or scholarly work. Can we fruitfully read Heidegger when we know he was a Nazi sympathizer? Is it worth reading Hemingway when we know of his struggles and personal failings?
And what if someone wrote a great book and then also wrote an awful one?
It’s the journey back to reflect on all of this that has value in and of itself. Things are more complex when I put the image of Rudy Giuliani speaking in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping up next to the image of Rudy Giuliani comforting the people of NYC after 9/11.
It’s an exercise in calling to mind the Rudy Giuliani of 2001, not to erase how awful the Giuliani of 2022 truly is, but rather to remind myself that “there but by the grace of God go I.”