Romney, Roosevelt, and Giuliani

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Quite a kerfuffle erupted yesterday over Governor Romney’s decision to deny a state police escort to President Khatemi when the Iranian makes his propaganda visit to Harvard’s Joseph P. Kennedy School of Government. It reminds us of the wonderful story about how one of our police commissioners here in New York, Theodore Roosevelt, handled the visit of the anti-Semitic agitator from Berlin. The agitator was a clergyman named Rector Ahlwardt.

“Many of the New York Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to give him police protection,” Roosevelt later wrote, according to an edition of his autobiography posted at the Web site bartleby.com. “This, I told them, was impossible; and if possible would have been undesirable because it would have made him a martyr. The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous.” Roosevelt decided to put in charge of Alwardt’s security a Jewish sergeant and a score or two of Jewish policemen, so when the visiting agitator was in town, as Roosevelt put it, “He made his harangue against the Jews under the active protection of some forty policemen, every one of them a Jew.”

Mr. Romney faced a slightly different situation than Commissioner Roosevelt, for we are now in a war and anti-Semitism isn’t looking so ridiculous. Mr. Khatemi is not just an itinerant preacher. He’s the front man for a nation that is actively fighting against us, that is levying a war against the Jewish state, that has played a role in killing hundreds of Americans. His motives in coming here are patently disingenuous, as are those of the Kennedy School in hosting him. Our government has allowed Mr. Khatemi in as a private person, but the mission on which he is here is to carry out hostile state purposes — and his speech at Harvard has been timed to mock the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Mr. Romney put out a long and exceptionally thoughtful statement explaining his decision. By our lights Mr. Khatemi’s visit is more like the calculated insult that was represented by the appearance of Yasser Arafat at a concert at Lincoln Center in 1995. Mayor Giuliani had, as U.S. attorney in New York, been involved in investigating crimes in which Arafat had been implicated. He understood how inappropriate it was for Arafat to be at Lincoln Center and had the PLO chief ejected. At the time, the State Department in Washington and the goody-goody-two-shoes were in a terrible swivet. But the way it is looked upon with the clarity of hindsight is that Mr. Giuliani had handled it exactly right, and that is how Mr. Romney’s stand will be seen in years to come — as well as announcing that he, too, is going to be a serious player on the national scene come 2008.


The New York Sun

© 2024 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use