Thompson now sees it Rudy's way

UNLESS he defies expecta tions and runs for gov ernor, Rudy Giuliani's po litical career is probably over. Yet his time out of office has not dulled his ability to send New York liberals into spells of crazy talk.

Soon after the former mayor endorsed Mike Bloomberg by telling an Orthodox Jewish group that crime could rise again and the city "could very easily be taken back to the way it was with the wrong political leadership," supporters of Bill Thompson rushed to accuse the ex-mayor of race-baiting and code words.

Even Thompson, the black Democratic mayoral nominee, charged Giuliani and Bloomberg with using the "the politics of fear." Hmmm. Mighty curious, that.

Because five days later, speaking on a radio show that also has an Orthodox audience and host, Thompson himself was banging hard on the crime drum.

"We can't go back to where this city was. We need to be tough on crime," Thompson said to Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind. "We need to make sure that the Police Department right now doesn't lose any more of its police officers. We need to hold firm on crime, on the number of police officers."

Thompson called the NYPD "the best police force in the world" and said, "I would be tougher on crime" than Bloomberg. After noting that residents in black neighborhoods, including Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he grew up, suffered most during crime waves, Thompson finished with a flourish: "We will never go back."

Whoa, Nellie. Time out for a reality check.

The language Thompson used was similar enough to Giuliani's that some Bloomberg supporters accused Thompson of hypocrisy. It's a fair point, but there's a more important conclusion to be drawn, one that demonstrates how far New York has come.

As Thompson's law-and-order vow shows, a broad consensus now demands a large, aggressive police force that targets miscreants and protects the innocent. Talk about "root causes" and sympathy for the perps is still heard in some quarters, but no longer dominates discussion of crime and social policy.

Bad guys are out. Cops are heroes, not pigs.

Sixteen years of falling crime under Giuliani and Bloomberg have changed the way the city looks at itself. The implications of safer streets are as enormous as the benefits.

The last two real-estate booms were not confined to central Manhattan. Whole swaths of outer-borough neighborhoods, once considered off-limits for anybody with a choice, have been reclaimed for families and businesses. The subways and schools are safer, too.

Most important, the bar of expectations on policing and politics is higher. During the 30-year run-up in crime, when murders climbed from 500 to 2,300, before they started back down to 500 under Giuliani and Bloomberg, police commissioners came and went, but not a single one, to my knowledge, was fired because crime was out of control.

The assumption in the bad old days was that preventing crime wasn't possible except with social programs. Therefore, neither cops nor their boss should be held accountable.

No more. Now the job doesn't start after a mugging or a murder. Prevention is the yardstick for success up and down the chain of command and into City Hall.

That's a fact emphatically confirmed by Thompson's anti-crime pledge. When a veteran of the liberal establishment sounds the trumpet for the NYPD and campaigns on the promise of lower crime, you know the city has changed for the better.

One more fact. Giuliani was the difference. He proved that a larger, better-trained and better-managed force could prevent crime. By the time he left office, a new idea had taken hold.

Bloomberg, despite his love-hate relationship with his predecessor, acknowledges that he and his top cop, Ray Kelly, have been able to push crime down 35 percent more, thanks largely to the foundation Giuliani built.

With Thompson buying in, the circle is now complete. If he pulls an election upset, New Yorkers have his word: "We will never go back."