CRISIS MANAGEMENT:Former mayor of New York Rudy Guiliani talks candidly about what it takes to be a great leader and how he would deal with the current recession crisis, writes RICHARD GILLIS

TALKING TO former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani is an exercise in time travel. His was the human face of the greatest news event of our lifetimes, the everyman standing up for democracy in the face of terrorism, consistently finding the words to express how America felt as the twin towers of the World Trade Center smouldered behind him.

Oprah Winfrey called him America's Mayor and Timemagazine's editors made him their Man of the Year, marginally ahead of Osama bin Laden as the man who had affected the news agenda most in 2001 (previous holders of this post include Hitler and Stalin).

The Giuliani story post 9/11 has developed layers of fog that make straightforward judgements about his reputation difficult. What's clear is that the simple American hero archetype doesn't fit this career politician, whose ambition to run for the White House floundered against John McCain in the early stages of this year's race for the Republican nomination. He ran a campaign that leant heavily on the "America's Mayor" position, and while the broader country didn't buy it, the business community certainly does.

Leadership in a crisis is Rudy's schtick. He has moved from city politics to advise big corporations on what to do when they are in a fix, and in the age of fear, this is a lucrative niche. His hourly rate to appear at business conferences is rumoured to be in the $100,000 (€80,000) range.

In 2002, he reported $8 million (€6.35 million) in speaking income, a figure that has risen beyond $11 million (€8.7 million), and his thoughts for Leadership, the title of his autobiographical book, cost his publisher a cool $2.7 million (€2.1 million) in advances. But go back before 9/11 and Giuliani's image was different again: he was the plucky lawyer who dared to put the mob in the dock.

After serving in the Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan administrations, he rose to prominence in the mid-1980s by charging New York's infamous Five Families with extortion, racketeering and murder for hire. And just as significantly, given today's financial crisis, he brought down two of Wall Street's biggest rogue traders, Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, the latter forced to pay $900 million (€716 million) in fines for insider trading.

Talking about the challenge of rebuilding the Wall Street of today, the lawyer in him comes to the fore. "We have to do a full and complete investigation of what went wrong. We need to find out who was accountable," says Giuliani. "Firstly, we need to know how to fix it and secondly we need to find out who was criminally and civilly responsible and hold them accountable."

Any interview with a politician on a subject like leadership faces the same issue: how to get them to be specific. In this writer's experience, whole afternoons can pass by as gurus sit and talk in the abstract about ideas and theories. Rules are also an essential part of the toolbox.

For his part, Giuliani has five rules of leadership, general statements that depending on your definition of a crisis, can be applied to any situation ranging from post 9/11 geo-politics to what to do when your branch of Starbucks runs out of Sunrise muffins.

"The crisis makes the leader," he says, warming to his theme. "It does one of two things: it exposes the weaknesses or demonstrates the strengths. Crisis puts you under a microscope. You have to perform. We've had plenty of examples of people who fall apart under this sort of scrutiny or just do average or do very well. All of the world's leaders are now under the microscope. I suspect some will rise to the occasion and some won't."

Who, I ask, among today's politicians has risen to the challenge? The question interrupts his flow and he rather sulkily joins me in the here and now. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, he says, have had a good war so far. "It looks like Gordon Brown has risen to the occasion," he says.

"The reality was he had to step in, there is too much uncertainty in the world markets and the proposal that he came up with seems like a sound one. It was as if there was no other choice. But just because there was no other choice, doesn't mean that he shouldn't get credit. Someone else would have delayed and created further uncertainty as a result."

As if realising this apparent endorsement could be a hostage to fortune, Giuliani hedges his answer with all the panache of a Lehman Brothers trader.

"The victory here is in the outcome not in the stages along the way - if they can bring us through, then everything looks right," he says. "It's unfortunate, but in politics, everything is results-oriented, right? You can take great decisions along the way, but if they don't work, it can look like you made a mistake, and you can make some duff decisions, but if it works out you're the hero. It's good to be lucky. Life is like that."

The calls for greater state intervention are met with a Republican's disdain for big government. "We have to have some understanding of what the regulations are, but not over-regulate because it will restrict the ability of our businesses to resurrect themselves. We'll crush them before they get started again."

It is natural, he says, that there is an appetite for regulation now, but it's a knee-jerk reaction, because governments want to feel they are doing something positive to prevent it from happening again. "The reality is we have plenty of regulations - all these companies that got into trouble were among the most heavily regulated companies out there. The right question is not we have enough, but that we didn't zero in on the things we really had to look at. It's like finding a needle in a haystack when you have so many rules, the one that's really creating the problem doesn't get the emphasis it deserves.

The problem here was capitalisation and leverage. The companies affected did not have the appropriate amount of capital to deal with the downturn in the market."

It's a peculiar feature of the American electoral system that just as the world looks to the country for leadership, there is a vacuum at the top while the transition of power between George W Bush and President elect Barack Obama takes place.

Giuliani describes himself as "a student of this stuff", having been directly involved in two previous regime changes, from Ford to Carter, when he served in the Justice Department, and from Carter to Reagan.

"America has very good precedent handling the transition," he says. "We all know that in a campaign, and this is as true in Ireland as it is in United States, the words get a little out of control. Both men realise that they have a big part to play here. This is a very sensitive period."

He reminds us that Carter and Reagan had run against each other. "We had two transitions in a row where a president had to hand over power to the guy who had defeated him. We got through those very well and that was at the height of the Cold War, where presenting a strong public face was, like now, essential. Carter had to hand over power at a time when we had hostages in Iran."

The transition of federal government, he says, is a vast enterprise. Relationships between presidents are not subject to the same rules as the rest of us, he says, pointing to the friendship between the first president Bush and his successor Bill Clinton, "and, remember, it was Clinton who threw him out of office," he says.