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Especially by Pataki
A Date That Lives in Oratory
By CLYDE HABERMAN
IT did not take George E. Pataki long - he managed to get out all of four words - before he invoked Sept. 11 in announcing that he would not run again for governor. The terrorist attacks of 2001 weren't even the subject. He was talking about the inspiration that he drew from his father.
"A few months after Sept. 11, someone gave my daughter Emily an old photograph," Mr. Pataki began his remarks on Wednesday. "It was a picture of my father." He then reminisced about Louis Pataki, who was an assistant postmaster and a volunteer firefighter in Peekskill, N.Y. He died in 1996, a firm believer, the son said, in giving back to his community.
What was the 9/11 connection? Nothing.
But few are the public moments when Mr. Pataki fails to raise the specter of that terrible day, no matter what the setting. Like other elected officials, he deplores the way some people exploit the attacks for commercial or political gain. But his own interests are another story.
Introducing President Bush at the Republican National Convention last summer, he mentioned Sept. 11 or the World Trade Center or ground zero no fewer than 13 times. He started by singling out people from Oregon, Iowa and Pennsylvania for their post-disaster generosity.
Was it coincidental that all three states were pivotal in the presidential election, with Iowa's caucuses providing the first test of the candidates' strength? Those were not details likely to have been overlooked by the governor, now contemplating his own race for the White House in 2008.
It seems reasonable to assume that if he does run, he will use 9/11 again and again to emphasize his leadership skills. On that battlefield, he just might encounter competition from a certain former New York mayor who has prospered mightily himself because of Sept. 11, earning millions on the strength of his much-admired performance that day.
Mr. Pataki cannot have forgotten the slapping that he took from Andrew M. Cuomo during the 2002 campaign for governor. "There was one leader for 9/11: it was Rudy Giuliani," said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.
And Mr. Pataki? "He held the leader's coat," Mr. Cuomo said dismissively.
Those harsh remarks helped do in Mr. Cuomo, by affirming his reputation for abrasiveness. In time, he quit the race. The thing is, though, his crack about Mr. Pataki struck some New Yorkers as not entirely off the mark. Ever since, the governor has labored to erase lingering images of him as a 9/11 valet.
But very few of the Sept. 11 evocations, from him or other leaders, include calls for personal sacrifice in a time of war.
That point has been noted several times in this space. It arose again this week with a report that men and women in uniform are chafing under the realization that they alone bear the burden of the war on terror, repackaged lately by the Bush administration as the "global struggle against violent extremism."
One military officer, back from a tour in Iraq, was quoted in this newspaper as saying, "Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us."
IF anything, some in New York have embraced the opposite of sacrifice. They almost go out of their way to fill the coffers of the country that supplied 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Walking around town during the oppressive heat of recent days, you could see one business after another - a P.C. Richard store on the Upper West Side, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Columbus Circle, the Quiksilver store in Times Square - with front doors flung wide open while their energy-gobbling air-conditioning poured onto the sidewalk.
Why be so wasteful? "It's policy," said a clerk in a clothing store at Broadway and 87th Street, where the doors stayed open. "We have to do it."
Talk to groups in the city like New York Cares, Habitat for Humanity and Volunteers of America. All say there is a yearning for sacrifice ready to be harnessed if only the political will existed to do it. They saw that after Sept. 11, when the numbers of their volunteers soared.
"The desire to give and to give back is very strong," said Roland Lewis, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity in New York City. "That's part of human nature, ever more so in this time."
But then, Mr. Pataki surely knows that. It was a lesson, he said, that he learned from his father, who "always had time for a kind word, a neighborly gesture or to lend a helping hand as a volunteer in our community."
A Date That Lives in Oratory
By CLYDE HABERMAN
IT did not take George E. Pataki long - he managed to get out all of four words - before he invoked Sept. 11 in announcing that he would not run again for governor. The terrorist attacks of 2001 weren't even the subject. He was talking about the inspiration that he drew from his father.
"A few months after Sept. 11, someone gave my daughter Emily an old photograph," Mr. Pataki began his remarks on Wednesday. "It was a picture of my father." He then reminisced about Louis Pataki, who was an assistant postmaster and a volunteer firefighter in Peekskill, N.Y. He died in 1996, a firm believer, the son said, in giving back to his community.
What was the 9/11 connection? Nothing.
But few are the public moments when Mr. Pataki fails to raise the specter of that terrible day, no matter what the setting. Like other elected officials, he deplores the way some people exploit the attacks for commercial or political gain. But his own interests are another story.
Introducing President Bush at the Republican National Convention last summer, he mentioned Sept. 11 or the World Trade Center or ground zero no fewer than 13 times. He started by singling out people from Oregon, Iowa and Pennsylvania for their post-disaster generosity.
Was it coincidental that all three states were pivotal in the presidential election, with Iowa's caucuses providing the first test of the candidates' strength? Those were not details likely to have been overlooked by the governor, now contemplating his own race for the White House in 2008.
It seems reasonable to assume that if he does run, he will use 9/11 again and again to emphasize his leadership skills. On that battlefield, he just might encounter competition from a certain former New York mayor who has prospered mightily himself because of Sept. 11, earning millions on the strength of his much-admired performance that day.
Mr. Pataki cannot have forgotten the slapping that he took from Andrew M. Cuomo during the 2002 campaign for governor. "There was one leader for 9/11: it was Rudy Giuliani," said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.
And Mr. Pataki? "He held the leader's coat," Mr. Cuomo said dismissively.
Those harsh remarks helped do in Mr. Cuomo, by affirming his reputation for abrasiveness. In time, he quit the race. The thing is, though, his crack about Mr. Pataki struck some New Yorkers as not entirely off the mark. Ever since, the governor has labored to erase lingering images of him as a 9/11 valet.
But very few of the Sept. 11 evocations, from him or other leaders, include calls for personal sacrifice in a time of war.
That point has been noted several times in this space. It arose again this week with a report that men and women in uniform are chafing under the realization that they alone bear the burden of the war on terror, repackaged lately by the Bush administration as the "global struggle against violent extremism."
One military officer, back from a tour in Iraq, was quoted in this newspaper as saying, "Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us."
IF anything, some in New York have embraced the opposite of sacrifice. They almost go out of their way to fill the coffers of the country that supplied 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Walking around town during the oppressive heat of recent days, you could see one business after another - a P.C. Richard store on the Upper West Side, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Columbus Circle, the Quiksilver store in Times Square - with front doors flung wide open while their energy-gobbling air-conditioning poured onto the sidewalk.
Why be so wasteful? "It's policy," said a clerk in a clothing store at Broadway and 87th Street, where the doors stayed open. "We have to do it."
Talk to groups in the city like New York Cares, Habitat for Humanity and Volunteers of America. All say there is a yearning for sacrifice ready to be harnessed if only the political will existed to do it. They saw that after Sept. 11, when the numbers of their volunteers soared.
"The desire to give and to give back is very strong," said Roland Lewis, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity in New York City. "That's part of human nature, ever more so in this time."
But then, Mr. Pataki surely knows that. It was a lesson, he said, that he learned from his father, who "always had time for a kind word, a neighborly gesture or to lend a helping hand as a volunteer in our community."
