Recently, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is enjoying his highest approval rating ever, and even with the events of September 11, I do not know why this is.  This puzzles me because he is a Republican in a city where Republicans are outnumbered 5-to-1 by Democrats.
 
    Mayor Giuliani returned to office after a landslide victory in January 1998.   The former lawyer and state prosecutor reformed a seemingly ungovernable city, cutting the crime rate quickly.  According to BBC News, overall crime rates have dropped by an astonishing 44% to their lowest level in more than a generation, and the cityís murder rate is down by 70%.  This is a clear sign that his ìZero Toleranceî laws have been highly effective in a city that was once synonymous with danger.
 
    Recently the mayor has been attending funerals in the wake of the tragic events of September 11.  On average he attends four to six funerals a day and highly regrets every funeral he misses. He feels obligated to attend as many as he possibly can demonstrating true leadership.  He is also promising more money to the firefighters and police officers and has vowed to keep searching for all of the bodies of the firefighters until everyone is found.   Due to the heavy demands of his other job duties, Rudy only gets on average about four to five hours of sleep a night and is usually sleeping in his van in between events.  With all of these duties, Rudy never misses a New York Yankees game, because after all he is their biggest fan.
 
       Mayor Rudy Giuliani has done an outstanding job as mayor; however, have New Yorkers completely forgotten about all of the craziness that Rudy has been pulling over us for the last seven years?
 
    He cheated on his wife Donna Hanover and experienced a messy divorce due an affair he had with a former city hall aid and was secretly living with her inside of the mayorís residence, which by court order he can no longer live in.
 
    Have New Yorkers forgotten about all of the lawsuits against him and his police department?  Have we forgotten about racial profiling?  Have we forgotten that blacks can no longer get a cab in the city?  Have we seen the New York Cityís education system rapidly decline because the mayor doesnít seem to have the time to deal with it, because in his own words the system ìsucks,î and it would be great if it simply ìblew up?î  Have we simply forgotten about this?
 
    The mayor is not a terrible person.  But we should think twice before giving him such a high approval rating and before we think he is the greatest politician that ever lived, we should stop a minute and really think about what he has actually done for New York City.