Mayor of the World

So I'm sitting here (on a beautiful Saturday afternoon?) listening to Rudy's stump speech on C-SPAN. (Why?) And he's taking credit for the urban renaissance in NYC during the 1990s. Now, I'm not saying that he should get no credit for the state of the city during that period, but . . . isn't it generally true that most, if not all, major U.S. cities saw a renaissance in the 1990s? It was a period of rapid economic growth, concentrated in urban areas, and easy credit. So there was a lot of redevelopment of downtowns--in NYC, sure, but even in cities like Cleveland (hell, even Detroit), there's a bunch of new stuff in dowtown Chicago, and in L.A., as discussed in my previous post. Now, not all that renaissance "took," but it was a period of expansion, construction, and optimism for U.S. cities, almost everywhere.

My sense is that this is even true in foreign cities--London, Paris, I'm sure there are more.

It's not unusual for politicians to claim credit for general, even global trends. But this credit claiming needs some reality checking by journalists. It's at least as important as Rudy's utter lack of foreign policy experience.

Update: I forgot to mention D.C. (How?) Can Rudy claim credit for the transformation of D.C. in the last fifteen years?