While Rudy Giuliani is known as “America’s Mayor” for his leadership in the weeks following September 11, what has been overshadowed is how he brought accountability and competency to New York’s dysfunctional city government during the prior seven years.

The best known turnaround story of the Giuliani era is the 65% plunge in serious crime. By restructuring the NYPD and focusing its resources on the neighborhoods that needed them the most via the famous Compstat system, the poorest neighborhoods saw the greatest reduction in crime and improvement in quality of life. A murder in the troubled Washington Heights neighborhood now received the same attention as a murder on the tony Upper East Side.

Rudy could be considered the original “compassionate conservative” for the far-reaching welfare reforms he engendered. In 1993, one out of every 6.5 New Yorkers was on public assistance. Mr. Giuliani understood that not only was welfare bankrupting the city, it was ruining people’s lives by fostering dependency. He oversaw the transformation of chaotic welfare offices into dignified “Job Centers.” New York increased the money it spent helping each participant become job ready and find work from $300 in 1993 to nearly $3,000 in 2001. The result: Some 650,000 people had left the welfare rolls by the end of the Giuliani administration.

One of the more obscure Giuliani reform stories is the creation of the Administration for Children’s Services. After a string of horrific child abuse cases in 1995, Mr. Giuliani created the new independent agency that focused solely on abused and neglected children. By using many of the same accountability tactics employed at the NYPD, investigations of abuse became more thorough and timely. Incidents of serious abuse plummeted, and adoptions increased 65% as the number of children in foster care declined 32%. Outside experts conducted a review of the new agency and declared it a national model.

When Mr. Giuliani took office the city owned 33,000 units of abandoned housing. It is hard to fathom today, but landlords walked away from these properties because their value was less than the taxes that were owed. Such was the dim view of New York’s future just 12 years ago. The Giuliani administration aggressively moved abandoned housing into the hands of local residents and community groups who promised to redevelop. By the end of 2001, New York had largely divested itself of its real estate holdings, creating an incredible economic renaissance in places like Harlem, where the city once held title to one-third of all buildings. Talk about an “ownership society.”

The closer one looks at Mr. Giuliani’s record, the more one finds achievements that would please various national conservative constituencies. School choice proponents: Rudy pushed for school vouchers, created privately funded scholarships, brought charter schools to New York, and raised standards at the city university. The individual rights crowd: Rudy ended the bonuses and set-asides the city had given to minority and female contractors. Foreign policy hawks: Rudy is the guy who tossed Yasser Arafat out of Lincoln Center and refused to accept a $10 million donation post-9/11 from a Saudi prince who insinuated that America bore some responsibility for the attack.

Mr. Giuliani’s record also should appeal to fiscal conservatives. He killed or curbed 23 different taxes, reducing the city tax burden as a share of personal income to its lowest level in nearly 30 years. Inheriting a large budget gap, he not only held the line on city spending but reduced it for several years, keeping average annual spending increases to 3%. While hiring more cops and teachers, Mr. Giuliani was otherwise able to trim the bureaucracy. He also took on Mafia influences in the garbage carting industry and at the Javits Center and Fulton Fish Market, which had added an enormous “mob tax” to the cost of doing business in Gotham.

President Bush certainly didn’t create the Washington bureaucracy and has appointed strong leaders such as Condoleezza Rice and Porter Goss who are now shaking decades of lethargy from the State Department and the CIA. And the question of whether the behemoth federal government can ever be made to work effectively is a legitimate one. However, we should remind ourselves that not so long ago people were calling New York “ungovernable.” Mr. Giuliani proved otherwise and, in doing so, set the bar for all his successors who can no longer claim that the city is at the mercy of forces beyond their control.

No New York mayor in modern history has gone on to higher office. This is curious as it is one of the top executive jobs in the country – at $55 billion, the city’s budget is larger than all but a handful of states. Religious conservatives continue to express qualms about the possibility of a Giuliani presidency due to Rudy’s more centrist social views. (Although they seem to forget that this is the man who shuttered porn shops, brought Disney to Times Square, and used the bully pulpit to rail against religiously offensive art exhibits.) But I would wager the issue socially conservative residents of the South care most about these days is rebuilding the physical, economic, and social fabric of the Gulf Coast.

Through tough, creative, and competent leadership, Mr. Giuliani transformed virtually every facet of New York City government (alas, the public schools remained outside his grasp.) In searching for the right candidate to support, conservatives of all stripes should reflect on Rudy’s solid record of achievement in taming the once “ungovernable” New York and what that might translate to in Washington. As the song goes, if you can make it there …

Mr. Sahm works for the Manhattan Institute.