Amid Smoke, Dust, Giuliani Shines

He has been a combative, controversial figure--a mayor who seems to alienate as many New Yorkers as he inspires with his tough, sometimes hard-headed governing style. But ever since the attacks on the World Trade Center, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has enjoyed his finest hour.

During a week when New Yorkers cried out for a strong leader and a reassuring voice, Giuliani fit the bill: He’s hugged distraught family members, pumped the hands of exhausted firefighters and run a beleaguered city with focus and verve.

With a gap-toothed skyline glowing in front of him, Giuliani prowls lower Manhattan from dawn to dusk in a silver Suburban. His energy seems endless. Even long-standing critics are impressed.

“He will be remembered for remarkable leadership this week,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch, a Democrat who has been at odds with the Republican Giuliani--and even wrote a caustic book about him, “Giuliani: Nasty Man.” “He has converted a lot of people who disliked him.”

Maybe Giuliani doesn’t have a choice, with his city and its image wounded by the attack. But many New Yorkers grumble that President Bush could learn a lot from the man they call Rudy.

“The mayor’s out on the streets, dealing with people--not in his office,” security guard Willy Fernandez said.

It isn’t the first time Giuliani has found inspiration in a crisis. He won plaudits for his past stewardship of the city during snowstorms and natural disasters. Yet nothing has compared to his actions this week.

On the first day of the crisis, while the president was kept out of sight for security reasons, the mayor was ducking chunks of falling debris. He had rushed to the World Trade Center as soon as the first hijacked plane slammed into the building, and was part of the crowd running for their lives when the towers cascaded down.

Giuliani can identify with the city’s pain and shock, because he too has been dislocated by Tuesday’s strikes. His office at City Hall had to be abandoned because power in the neighborhood had been knocked out.

And his “bunker” has been flattened.

The former federal prosecutor long has been security conscious; three years ago he built a $13-million emergency shelter that he proudly called “The Bunker.” It was impregnable, the mayor said, the perfect place to hold out from a natural disaster or terrorist strike.

But soon after the twin towers fell, the nearby building housing the Bunker crumbled too. Since then, Giuliani has had to relocate the city’s command headquarters several times, scrambling to find an appropriate spot. He’s now in an old, drafty midtown building--the location of which is supposed to be kept secret.

He has remained the leader closest to the destruction. And amid the carnage, Giuliani has come across as feeling. He cried on “Good Morning, America.” He pleaded with people not to vent anger toward Arab Americans.

“We are above that,” he said simply.

Seeking to unite the city, Giuliani has asked that differences be set aside. He even hugged Hillary Rodham Clinton, once his political enemy and now New York’s junior Democratic senator.

It’s a far cry from the confrontational Giuliani who over the last several years has presided over a dramatic reduction in crime but alienated African Americans and other minorities in the process. Few criticize him for that now.

“We feel like the wrong guy is in the White House,” said Fred Siegel, a New York political commentator and political science professor.

(Term limits bar Giuliani, 57, from running again. He withdrew last year from a hotly contested Senate race against Clinton because of his prostate cancer and an extra-marital affair that ended in a messy battle with his now-estranged wife, Donna Hanover.)

This week, the mayor has been rising at 5 a.m. to hold meetings with city officials. He is absorbed by the details: the amount of debris hauled away per day; the number of body parts recovered; the speed of DNA matching, which will help end the awful pain of the relatives of the missing.

After Giuliani’s time at City Hall ends in December, some hope he’ll stay on to play a role in the rebuilding of lower Manhattan.

“He said he wanted to retire,” Siegel said. “But we need him now.”