Fred Siegel, who wrote a very flattering biography of Rudy, says:

....the switch from Bratton to Safir [was] the "worst policy decision" Giuliani made. Safir, Siegel said, lacked the instincts needed in the city and contributed to the worsening racial tensions in Giuliani's second term. "This was [Giuliani's] biggest failure," said Siegel, "not being big enough to keep Bratton. . . . Many of the failures [of his second term] flowed from that decision."

Jerome Hauer, whom Rudy appointed to head the office of emergency management, says:

Giuliani "had a blind spot when it came to people he knew well" and "very little respect for the vetting process....The competent people in the administration all tended to leave because they got tired of the borderline-incompetent people who got in.

Then there's Russell Harding, whose father, as head of the Liberal Party, was instrumental in getting Rudy re-elected as Mayor. Rudy appointed the younger Harding to lead the Housing Development Corp.:

Harding had no college degree or background in housing and finance, and was eventually convicted of stealing more than $300,000 from the agency and sentenced to more than five years in prison for the embezzlement and for possessing child pornography

According to Rudy's book:

"Patronage does not mean giving a job to someone who supported you politically," he writes. "It means giving a job to someone only because he supported you politically."

Bottom line: Rudy's leadership record is just smoke and mirrors. Hopefully, his cronyism and poor choices in appointments will prove to be his achilles heel.