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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With James Traub

Aired November 03, 2001 - 09:52   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The next mayor of New York faces some daunting challenges. First, guiding the city's recovery following the September 11 attack, and, of course, filling the shoes of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has risen to heroic stature in this crisis.

Joining us from New York to talk about that is James Traub, contributing writer for "The New York Times" magazine. Good to see you, James.

JAMES TRAUB, "THE NEW YORK TIMES" MAGAZINE: Thanks very much, good to see you.

PHILLIPS: Well, by the writing that you've done, the folks that you've talked with, including Rudy Giuliani, what do you think? Quite a political hero, yes?

TRAUB: It's going to be a very, very tough election, for one thing, and obviously it'll be tough to be mayor. I think as of a couple of weeks ago, everybody thought they knew the outcome. It was going to be Mark Green. And now all of a sudden, for the last few days, we've seen an incredible tightening, and we don't really know how it's going to come out now.

PHILLIPS: Well, are you hearing any other names? And if not, let's talk about the type of person it is going to take to kind of garner or gain that respect that Giuliani has received.

TRAUB: You know, I think the incredibly difficult thing about being mayor now is that it's going to be both a managerial, technical kind of job, where you have to figure out how to run a city which has a terrible deficit, deep, deep financial problems, and also it's a kind of spiritual job, that is, you have to be able to lead people who are nervous, who are very worried about their future, who are worried about tomorrow.

Giuliani has established a dimension of character or spiritual leadership, call it what you will, that is almost impossible to follow. He'll have to find some version of that which is suitable to his own personality. You can't be Giuliani, that's not possible.

PHILLIPS: What do you mean by spiritual leadership?

TRAUB: Well, I know it's a bizarre word to use in politics, but the truth is that when we use the word "character," we're talking about something which goes beyond policies and policy prescriptions and conventional politics. Obviously character is always an important component of leadership.

But at a moment of crisis, I think people look to their political leader, and especially New Yorkers look to their mayor, for a kind of reassurance, strength, consolation that they don't otherwise.

And you can think of all sorts of prior examples in New York history. The one everyone knows about is Fiorello La Guardia, who was mayor during the Depression and at the onset of World War II, who was a consolatory figure as well as an immensely strong and dominating figure.

The same was true to some extent of Mayor John Lindsay during the '60s, during that period of race riot. The same was true to some extent of Mayor Ed Koch during the time of the city's fiscal crisis in the '70s.

So those intangible qualities of leadership, which have to do with character, and which I'm calling spiritual, perhaps there's a better word, but I don't think it's wrong, those rise to the fore at moments of difficulty.

PHILLIPS: All right, so taking to heart this spiritual aspect, this $4 billion deficit, let's talk about rebuilding lower Manhattan. What is the next leader going to have to do to inspire business men and women to set up shop again or even create new -- a new shop?

TRAUB: Yes, this is obviously a big problem. The first thing that he has to do, which is not completely in his control, is get federal money quickly. This is the big issue, that the federal government has promised New York City $20 billion for cleanup. That money will go to lower Manhattan. It will go not only literally for the cleanup, it will hopefully also go for some kinds of tax advantages that we can offer to people down there. It will go to repair the subways and the transportation and telecommunications infrastructure.

If people feel that that place is coming back fast, then I think when they're balanced between a decision, Do I stay in New Jersey where I've moved temporarily? Or do I come back to lower Manhattan? I think they will. But we're now conducting an experiment that nobody would like to conduct to see whether or not being together in this close, confined space in lower Manhattan is so important to the financial industry and others that even though they're now leaving for what could be a year, a year and a half, before the place is ready again, they will come back.

And nobody for certain knows the answer to that question.

PHILLIPS: Well, yes, firefighters also, police officers, teachers, these folks are going to have pretty high expectations of the next leader, well deservingly, they probably should get much higher salaries, don't you agree?

TRAUB: Well, you know, it was a staple of the debate before all this happened that teachers were going to leave in droves. They would go the suburbs. In New York City, a teacher in the suburbs can get paid, oh, depends on where they are, but a good -- a quarter, 25 percent more than they do here.

So the fear was if teachers weren't given a large salary increase, they would leave. Well, the fact is, there isn't the money for it now. And so there's been a -- when they negotiate their new contract, it will probably have to be very small increases up front, larger increases in the third year. But that's going to be hard to get people to accept.

Policemen, obviously these folks are heroes, they've played an extraordinary important role, and we have the deepest admiration for them. They were very angry at Mayor Giuliani before all this happened. We forget that now, but tremendous alienation because they felt they were being underpaid, mistreated, the precinct houses were falling apart.

Where's the money to treat them as they deserve to be treated? There'll have to be some increases, but at a time when the great imperative is finding a way of cutting 15 percent of the city's budget, there simply isn't the money to treat people as they deserve to be treated.

PHILLIPS: James Traub, writer for "The New York Times" magazine, thank you so much. And it'll be interesting to see how Giuliani's book does, no doubt, probably...

TRAUB: Very well...

PHILLIPS: Yes.

TRAUB: ... is the answer.

PHILLIPS: I -- I...

TRAUB: Thanks very much.

PHILLIPS: All right, thanks, James.

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