By Richard Brookhiser

April 9, 2000 | 8:00 p.m

The whirlwind of Patrick Dorismond blows on, tossing dominions and powers like so many palm fronds.

Hillary Clinton goes to the Senate. That seems plain enough. Mayor Giuliani has been running a campaign modeled on his three runs for Mayor-a standard New York Republican effort, but several degrees to the left. The single-issue pro-life vote is lost to him, since he embraces even the savagery of partial-birth abortion (what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan calls "infanticide"), while the Conservative Party, expressing the meditations of Gov. George Pataki's heart, if not those of his head, is determined to sabotage him in the name of ideological purity. (Why the Conservatives continue to support Mr. Pataki is another question.) Mr. Giuliani was more than content to lose these voters; he welcomed their opposition, since it would enhance his image with his target constituency, the free-floating liberals who gave him his margin of victory in his 1993 Mayor's race. Then they had been terrorized by the David Dinkins crime wave; he expected them now to be appalled by Mrs. Clinton's ambition, corruption and pseudofeminism. They may still be appalled, but they are even more appalled by the Dorismond fiasco. The Mayor has lost the wimpy left, and won't win the die-hard right. The Democrats will have to wait an extra year to re-take City Hall, though they will have the pleasure of 12 months' pecking at the Mayor's eyes as if he were a dying seagull. The double tragedy of the Giuliani administration is part omission, part persistence. He did one impossible thing by bringing crime rates down. It seems ungrateful to expect him to have done two, but if he had also tackled taxes and spending in any meaningful way, he would have benefited by having two topics of conversation. A leader should always be able to change the subject. An extreme case came in 1983, when the Marines died in their barracks in Lebanon. At the same time, halfway around the world, the 81st Airborne was landing in Grenada. With one pirouette in the map room, Ronald Reagan could turn from debacle to victory. It wasn't deliberate, but it was the luck that comes from energy. All Mr. Giuliani knew how to do was what he did with crime in his first term; in the second term, all he did was twist the screws tighter, until he stripped the threads. Libertarians may take a bow, because some of the police policies that are now rocking City Hall are designed to enforce laws that libertarians oppose. The stop-and-frisk policy is urban gun control. Liberals should like it, because aren't guns infernal machines that should be swept up by any means necessary? Dorismond died in an antipot drug bust. How far is it from "Just say no," to "Just say freeze"? But let us not confuse the desire to modify unwise or unjust laws with the desire to end all "quality-of-life" laws whatever, on the grounds that they seem trifling. An ominous portent appeared in last week's Observer , when some grumbling cop was quoted as saying that the police should be going after rapists and murderers, and not messing with the little stuff. This was the 911 psychology that ruled policing for decades, and that kept officers happily warming the seats of their patrol cars and the chairs of their precinct houses. It should not be beyond the wit of man to keep officers on the beat, while keeping them and ordinary citizens out of trouble. In fact, the New York Police Department does that to a great extent, as the figures show: New York cops fire their guns fewer times, and kill fewer innocent people, than cops in other cities, or than they themselves did in the Dinkins years. So their few lonely defenders, chiefly City Hall and the New York Post , tirelessly point out. The tirelessness is part of the problem, certainly on the Mayor's part. Two hundred years ago, John Adams observed, with envy and resentment, that George Washington had "the gift of silence." Mayor Giuliani has it even less than John Adams. There are times when one should say nothing. There are times when one should say nothing even though one's enemies are wrong. The Mayor made no good points effectively, and made a number of bad ones quite effectively. His pre-emptive counterpunching only added to the impression of chaos, which is his great enemy. When Francis Fukuyama made a book out of his article, "The End of History," he added a point about the role of self-respect in the modern world. Everyone, the world over, needs it now. No one will willingly defer or submit. Mr. Fukuyama thought respect was conferred by political participation, but there are also a host of symbolic transactions which block or bestow it. People want respect at almost any cost. There is a Roman saying, Fiat justicia ruat coelum . Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. So it is with respect. What was the Boston Massacre? Five wharf rats who were in the wrong place. How many lives did the American Revolution cost? Twenty-five thousand patriots, plus who knows how many redcoats, Tories and Indians. Was it worth it? If you reckon the lives, no, of course not. If you care about liberty and respect, yes, of course. The trouble with respect as a guide to action is that it can so easily be manipulated. How will Senator Hillary salve the self-esteem of blacks, or Haitians, or the Dorismond family? The only time she has ever been close to a black person is when she saw Vernon Jordan down the hall, cleaning up after her husband's tarts. Who is less dangerous to people of color-Al Sharpton or Justin Volpe? Abner Louima's torturers sodomized a black man with a night stick. Mr. Sharpton's comrade and co-demonstrator burned and shot up Freddy's Fashion Mart. None of it matters. None of it matters at all. People must and will be respected; elections are the alternative to the streets. So Giuliani Time, after losing to Hillary Time, will be followed by Hevesi Time or Green Time, which will, in short time, become Dinkins Time. That was, for those who have forgotten, the Time of Dead Black People-more of them dead from crime and from cops. It is a price we are willing to pay. And if black voters themselves are most willing to pay it, who can say that they are wrong?