The Giulianis are getting a divorce and it’s starting to get ugly. For those who hated Rudolph Giuliani’s heavy-handed, albeit successful, management of New York City or can’t understand how “America’s mayor” — the man who guided the city during its worst day, 9/11 — wound up as President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, the divorce news comes with a high degree of schadenfreude.
But what it reminds me of is that qualities are neither good nor bad but context makes them so. Before 9/11, Rudy was the villain to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Gandhi turn in support of navally bombarded Vieques and to second wife Donna Hanover, whom he humiliated by announcing their divorce to the press — before he announced it to her. After 9/11, however, Rudy was the second coming of Winston Churchill.
What changed? Certainly not Rudy. People don’t change. They become more of themselves. But the combativeness that could make him seem so obnoxious in dealing with personal, cultural matters proved heroic and epic in the face of an implacable foe on the world stage.
Which brings us to the former Judith Nathan, the third Mrs. G, and to Trump. Women always think that they can change a man, that the next time will be different, that he will be different with them. But people born for the storm are rarely content with the peace. In Trump, Rudy — a fan of the operatic — has the unending Cat. 5 storm he craves, as the latest crisis involving him, Trump, Ukraine and rival Joe Biden attests.
While there may not be a fourth Mrs. G in the offing, he and Trump really are a marriage made in, well, whatever.