Before September 11, 2001, Rudolph Giuliani was simply the lame duck mayor of New York. Embroiled in a torrid extramarital affair and somewhat embattled because of several alleged incidents of police brutality against blacks throughout the course of his two terms, Giuliani was, in some minds, far from an ideal chief executive officer of a major city.

But on that fateful Tuesday morning when New Yorkers were heading to the polls for the primary election of his eventual successor, Giuliani’s city was attacked by terrorists and, almost overnight he became a hero. In the weeks following the attacks, which forever changed the skyline of one of the country’s most recognizable cities, Giuliani was often referred to as “America’s Mayor.” Time Magazine, which named him its Person of the Year in 2001, went as far as to call Giuliani “Mayor of the World.”

While the circumstances that brought New York to its knees can never be compared to the devastation New Orleans has seen due to Hurricane Katrina, the inevitable comparisons abound in the leadership styles of Giuliani to Ray Nagin, a political novice when elected mayor of New Orleans in 2002 who undoubtedly has seen a crisis unlike any of his predecessors. A CNN special airing over the weekend called Nagin’s infamous outburst during a radio interview a moment of “heated frustration,” while it applauded Giuliani’s cool and calm demeanor, saying he looked everything like “a leader.”

Ronald Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that Giuliani was able to become a larger-than-life figure in the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center because of resources and support that Nagin is slowly getting almost two weeks after Katrina hit.

“Giuliani was able to mobilize resources in New York because 75 percent of the city was operable. With New Orleans, you had a city under water,” Walters said, adding that Nagin was virtually isolated due to the extreme conditions caused by the storm. “He was developing a strategy. But the minute it was clear that New Orleans was under water, it should have shifted to the federal level because they had the ships, planes and resources that it would take to free people off of the rooftops and navigate the water.”

“It’s really difficult to compare leadership because one of the mayors was cut off and isolated from his ability to exercise authority and the other was able to do it with the [television] cameras rolling,” Walters said. “The cameras really couldn’t get to Nagin so people really didn’t know what he was doing.”

In fact, it was three days before Nagin’s voice of leadership was really heard, when he lambasted the federal government during a live radio broadcast, telling federal leaders to “get off your asses, and let’s do something, and let’s fix the biggest (expletive) crisis in the history of this country.”

Melissa Harris Lacewell, a political science professor with the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, said the radio outburst could have been a defining moment for Nagin, but it will likely be trumped by spin control of GOP heavyweights looking to deflect blame.

“He broke down on the radio, and the next day, of course, we saw responsiveness from the federal government,” Harris Lacewell, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “If that moment could have remained sort of the defining piece of who Nagin is in this tragedy, he could have emerged as a local hero. Unfortunately, I think that’s not going to be the way Nagin is going to be remembered.”

Currently a visiting professor at Princeton University, Harris Lacewell said even media outlets have selected other poster boys to highlight, namely the feisty Lt. Gen. Russel Honore and New Orleans’ smooth former mayor Marc Morial.

“Marc Morial has become the person that CNN and MSNBC would rather deal with,” Harris Lacewell said, adding that she has seen Morial, the current president of the National Urban League, on more interviews than Nagin of late.

“You’ve got Morial dressed in a suit, tie and cufflinks rather than Nagin walking with a sweat towel on his shoulder,” Harris Lacewell said. “In many ways, it looks like Morial has become the go-to man to talk about the city’s reconstruction.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, the combination of consistent media coverage and testimonials of victims’ families claiming Giuliani was a solid rock to lean on, the one-time prosecutor became a darling of the national Republican Party. His name has been tossed around as a possible candidate for governor of New York and even a contender for the 2008 race for the White House. Nagin, who was a six-figure businessman before entering politics three years ago, may have seen his once-thriving political career come to an abrupt end, despite mixed opinions on his city’s efforts to effectively evacuate New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

But Walters maintains that the highly-touted leadership by Giuliani after tragedy struck his city shouldn’t necessarily earn him a free pass to the political promise land.

“[Giuliani] didn’t do anything that any mayor wouldn’t have done or couldn’t have done,” Walters said. “The media did overplay what Giuliani did, but I am at a loss to see what extraordinary thing he did but get to the scene.”

Prior to 9/11, Giuliani was viewed as having done moderately well politically, Walters said. In fact, the day of the attacks, a not too pleasant article on Giuliani ran in a New York daily newspaper. In contrast, even four years later, Giuliani couldn’t buy negative press.

“He was widely regarded as somebody who left most of the city of New York behind, especially people of color, the blacks and Hispanics,” Walters said. “He wasn’t regarded as much of an administrator.”

“Nagin, in the context of politics right now, is a lighting rod,” Walters said. “But there are so many people in Louisiana who don’t want to put the onus of this on the federal government and who are instead trying to vilify Nagin as the person responsible.

“If he ever did try to run for statewide office, this would certainly be used against him,” Walters continued. “It’s a convenient way of labeling him as a failure when, in fact, the scope of the situation put the remedy far beyond his control.”

Harris Lacewell agreed, saying that Nagin is now being portrayed in the same light that many black politicians are often unfairly seen.

“Over the past week, he’s been portrayed as someone who’s not making legitimate complaints, but rather just complaining,” Harris Lacewell sad. “But Nagin really tapped into a kind of black political culture that respects defiance. One of the things that has marked black politics has been a sense that black people never get anything. We only get it if we demand it.

“When Nagin took that stance, he aligned himself with the black political tradition that demands something gets done for his constituents,” Harris Lacewell said, adding that the ramifications will likely not only spell the end of Nagin’s political career, but also place serious hurdles in the way of any black person seeking to lead City Hall when New Orleans is rebuilt.

“The federal government will invest tens of millions -- even billions -- to rebuild New Orleans, but I can assure you when they rebuild New Orleans, it will not be 67 percent black, and they will not bring back poor blacks that have been displaced,” she said, predicting that a John Edwards-type Democrat will likely rise up to show that they are the one best suited to lead a new New Orleans.

“In all honesty, I don’t have a lot of faith in [national] Democratic Party leaders because they have continually worked over the last 30 years to distance the party from the African-American vote,” Harris Lacewell said, adding that such a movement in New Orleans, combined with an affluent, majority-white city, could mean that it could be years -- even decades -- before another black is elected mayor.

“There are alot of angry white Southerners right now, and if you get them to become vocal about the Republican Party’s failure, they will definitely gain the votes,” Harris Lacewell said. “[But] they’re not going to embrace blacks, and they will try to use Nagin as a scapegoat.”
 
But will New Orleans’ top man be seen as an ineffective leader in a time of catastrophic circumstances?

“I don’t think it’s a question of effective leadership, but rather a question of resources. When the lives of blacks are at stake, you can bet there will be a slower response,” Harris Lacewell said. “What Giuliani did in New York, he did in large part because there was not a moment of delay from the federal government making sure it was supporting the local government.”

Once the waters recede, both figuratively and literally, Harris Lacewell said Nagin, a man who rose from humble beginnings in New Orleans to become an executive with Cox Communications, will have a number of options in his post-mayoral days.

“He goes on the lecture circuit, he writes a book. He’s never going to be broke,” Harris Lacewell said. “But he’s not going to be running for elected office at a higher level.”

Darlene Young, president of Blacks in Government, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group hopes Harris Lacewell’s and Walters' predictions are proven wrong.

“He did what he had to do, and I would hope that people would see him as a person who was caring and concerned,” Young told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “I would hope that this would not hurt his political aspirations, but again, you never know.”