Giuliani and the Manhattan Institute: The New George Bush and Straussianism?Today’s Observer story on Rudy Giuliani peeks into his intimate relationship with the conservative Manhattan Institute. Last year, they report, at an Institute award ceremony, Giuliani credited them with masterminding a huge portion of his platform.
“If there was kind of like a charge of plagiarism for political programs, I’d probably be in a lot of trouble because I think we plagiarized most of them, if not all of them, from the pages of the [Institute publication] City Journal and from the thinking and analysis of the Manhattan Institute.”
The Observer suggests that this is a unique scenario, where a candidate’s “policy dossier is built nearly from scratch on the theories of academics.” “I can’t imagine any other instance or any on the horizon where a think tank has that direct an influence,” author Tom Wolfe told the Observer. He may be right about a think tank in specific terms, but in general this story looks familiar. We can’t help but recall a time not long after our last president was elected when journalists began pointing out how strongly George Bush and his team were influenced by the thinking of German Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss.