THE MANY TRIALS OF BILL DE BLASIO
Jerry Harkins
New York is a tough town. The folks who live here are smart, savvy and outspoken but they do occasionally make inscrutable decisions. In 2013, they elected Bill de Blasio as their Mayor by a landslide. They re-elected him in 2017 by another, albeit slightly smaller, landslide. He did not have a great deal to recommend him on either occasion but he also did not have much in the way of credible competitors. Fortunately for him, he did have a charismatic son Dante whose television ads were a hit. He himself had no charisma and no significant executive experience. Among Democrats, the obvious nominee had been Christine Quinn who was Speaker of the City Council, a smart, thoughtful politician. But she had three strikes against her. She was a woman, a married lesbian, and a protégé of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg was a billionaire entrepreneur who had been a partner at Salomon Brothers. He was also the best mayor New York had ever had, an empiricist, a pragmatist, and a management genius. With Quinn’s help, he by-passed the city’s term limits law and served for twelve years. But by the 2013 election, a lot of voters were tired of him and angry about some of the decisions he had made. They took it out on Quinn. Still, the inaugural speakers attacked Mr. Bloomberg viciously to his face, something de Blasio either knew in advance or should have known. It was embarrassing etiquette and asinine politics. It was also a portent of things to come.
De Blasio entered City Hall with some big ideas. But his first priority, he announced, would be to eliminate the horse carriages in Manhattan because they constituted animal cruelty. To the city’s animal activists, this was a big deal but to most people it was either a yawn or a laugh. To the experts, it symbolized the invincible ignorance of city dwellers about animal husbandry. Whatever anyone thought, it was an arrogant, confrontational and elitist blunder. It got worse when it turned out that he couldn’t get it done. The animal lovers in his base were enraged, accusing him of caving into the big money interests. Everyone else was astonished at his obliviousness or stupidity. Whatever it was, there was a lot more of it to come.
He promised to solve the problem of the dwindling stock of affordable housing, an easy promise to keep because he would get to do the counting and write the report card. His policies made things worse. There were more homeless sleeping on the streets, working poor sleeping on the floors of the shelter bureaucracy, and rats attacking children in public housing. His people were unable to implement a lead abatement program, keep the elevators running, install air conditioners in summer day camps during the hottest months on record, maintain heating systems during the coldest months or deal with escalating crime rates in the projects. Meanwhile, the Zoning Department continued to issue dozens of permits for ridiculous, huge billionaires’ condos to developers noted for their political contributions. With great fanfare, de Blasio announced Project Zero designed to cut down on traffic fatalities in the city streets. After some early successes, the accident and death tolls started to increase again, a result he still hasn’t connected to his radical re-designing of the city’s traffic management priorities and initiatives. It’s one thing to encourage bicycle riding which he did but quite another to make it safe which he didn’t. The result has been more bicyclists and more bicycle accidents. Duh! Then, doubling down on his inability to ban horse carriages, he and the City Council passed a law forbidding the sale of foie gras. Again, the motive was to prevent what the solons saw as animal cruelty. Again, it only proved that New York politicians are blissfully ignorant. Sales of the delicacy went through the roof and law suits were brought protesting Mother de Blasio’s overprotective rulemaking about what people can and cannot eat. The new law has yet to go into effect but seems certain to share the fate of all efforts to legislate morality. To his credit, he knew the charter school movement was wreaking havoc with the public school budget but he seemed cowed by the political clout of the charter entrepreneurs. His instinct was to resist them but he usually wound up caving in to television ads attacking him as being anti-children. He was not solely responsible for any of these problems or for the mismanagement that plagued attempted solutions. He was, after all, dealing with a demoralized city bureaucracy and the New York State government, one of the most dysfunctional, corrupt regimes in the world. But he was and is a terrible manager, a big thinking ideologue disengaged from the day-to-day business of getting things done.
Not everything was a failure. Universal free pre-school was an important step toward breaking the cycle of poverty. It wasn’t an original idea but he did get it done in spite of rampant corruption, obstruction and horse trading in Albany. Free breakfast and lunch programs for all public school children was another vital step in leveling the playing field. But tinkering with the admissions policy of elite high schools was monumentally wrong-headed. He was right about virtually eliminating stop-and-frisk and broken-windows policing. He handled the 2018 measles outbreak as well as could be expected and he did so at considerable risk to his standing in the Orthodox Jewish community. He is right about closing down the infamous Rikers Island prison complex. But he could afford to do so because he had inherited a much safer city from Mayor Bloomberg. Similarly, he was right in decentralizing the garbage transfer facilities against the opposition of the affluent communities who didn’t want more garbage trucks in their backyards.
So it’s a mixed record. But it should not have been. When Mr. de Blasio entered office in 2014, the city was in good shape and was more politically unified and far more productive than it had been in a long time. Most of its major problems – income inequality, affordable housing, congestion and the like – were the problems related to its successes in the post-9/11 or Bloomberg era. Most of de Blasio’s failures were not substantive blunders but were the result of being rooted in ideology instead of analysis. So, in 2019 when he entered the Democratic contest for the party’s presidential nomination –– which he had no chance of winning –– the bloom was off the rose. His quixotic campaign was met with outrage and derision. In spite of some significant achievements, his constituents were now embarrassed.
Under the best of circumstances, de Blasio would be classified as a mediocre mayor if he didn’t have such a huge sense of entitlement. Why would any politician with brains insist on travelling in an SUV with a police posse eleven miles to a gym in Brooklyn? Why would he hire an expensive and embarrassing chief of staff for his wife? Why would he continually pick silly fights with the Governor whose good will is essential to almost his entire agenda? Why would he nurture a whining if not toxic distaste for the media? Why, in, 2015 and 2016 would he be so clumsy in endorsing Hillary Clinton who had jump started his career? Did it all start in kindergarten with a report card saying “Billy does not play well with other children?”
The answer to these questions must begin with the realization that being mayor of any large city is a very demanding job and one that often attracts unqualified candidates who see it as a gateway to bigger and better positions. Then it is necessary to understand that America’s most successful mayors have rarely enjoyed the approval of the pundits and the good government lobbies (aka the goo-goos). Consider, for example, the late Richard J. Daley who was Mayor of Chicago for 21 years (1955-1976). Publishers, pundits and many academics were convinced he was corrupt, a racist, an authoritarian and a liar. Some of the criticism may have been true to one degree or another but his constituents loved him. He was elected six times usually getting more than 70% of the vote. He transformed a decaying city of obsolete stockyards and nineteenth century railyards into a thriving financial and cultural capital that actually lived up to the claim of being “the city that works.” He was, personally, scrupulously honest. He was born and died in the working class Bridgeport neighborhood. He was buried from the same church he had been baptized in. There was corruption in Chicago and Daley was no saint even if he was a daily communicant. He was surely a narrow minded autocrat. It is probably true that he engineered the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 through the simple expedient of counting the votes of a huge majority of the residents of the city’s cemeteries. He did not manage the 1968 Democratic convention or the police riots that responded to the radical protests. But Saint Walter Cronkite’s bitter indictment of him on national television was ignorant and malicious. Thirty-two years after his death, he is routinely ranked among the best mayors in U.S. history (as is his son, Richard M.). He was the last of a breed that included some of the most accomplished politicians of the twentieth century. For example:
· John Francis (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald was twice elected Mayor of Boston. He was the master of Fitzblarney. “Honey Fitz can talk you blind / on any subject you can find / Fish and fishing, motor boats / Railroads, streetcars, getting votes.” He was forced to withdraw from the mayoral race in 1913 because of an indiscretion involving a lovely cigarette girl named Toodles, about whom the less said the better. He was the maternal grandfather of another great Irish American politician John Fitzgerald Kennedy who, it seems, inherited his wandering eye.
· James Michael Curley, ten-time candidate and four-time Mayor of Boston between 1914 and 1950, also known as Frank Skeffington, hero of Edwin O’Connor’s novel The Last Hurrah. He served two Congressional Terms, one term as Governor of Massachusetts and several prison terms. His first conviction was for taking a civil service test for an illiterate constituent who needed a job. The second was for influence peddling. He had nothing else to sell. The third time it was a federal rap for mail fraud. He simply continued to run the state from the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Eventually Harry Truman pardoned him for the last two convictions. The voters, too, forgave him and there are now two statues of him in the space between Faneuil Hall and the new City Hall. His slogan was, “Curley Gets Things Done.” Which was God’s honest truth.
· James John (Beau James or Gentleman Jimmy) Walker, Jesuit educated lyricist (“Will You Love Me In December As You Do In May?”) and dapper Mayor of New York during the jazz age. Denounced by Cardinal Farley for tolerating vice (His Eminence was the first social scientist to note that “girlie magazines” were the cause of the Great Depression) and by the Seabury Commission for corruption, he resigned in 1932 and retreated to Europe one step ahead of the law in the company of his mistress, the showgirl and actress Betty Compton. He was played by Bob Hope in the movie Beau James.
· Frank (“I am the law”) Hague, seven time Mayor of Jersey City and Boss of Hudson County. He was expelled from school at age 14 and trained as a boxer. Never made more than $8,500 a year but left an estate valued at more than $10 million. That would be about $100 million in 2019. Utterly corrupt, he was forced to resign in 1940 but able to appoint his son-in-law as his successor. But Jersey City was a great place for a working man and his family. For one thing, Hague built the renowned Jersey City Medical Center which provided free medical care for all citizens for several decades.
· Bill O’Dwyer, Mayor of New York from 1946 to 1950 was born in a thatched cottage in Lismirrane, County Mayo and worked his way through Fordham Law School. He gained notoriety as the Prosecutor of the Murder, Inc. gang and served as a Brigadier General during World War II. He was an outstanding Mayor who also established the record for taking extended vacations but he ultimately ran afoul of the good government types who objected to his unsavory friends. According to the Kefauver Committee, he hobnobbed with members of organized crime and there was speculation that he might be indicted. He never was and after the committee was disbanded, Harry Truman appointed him Ambassador to Mexico.
There are no angels on that list. These mayors were all Irish-Americans but not all successful mayors have been. Just a few that come to mind are Fiorello LaGuardia of New York, John Hickenlooper of Denver, Kasim Reed of Atlanta and, of course, Willie Brown of San Francisco. As Speaker of the California Assembly (14 years) and Mayor (2 terms), Brown set new standards of sartorial and rhetorical elegance and progressive politics. But the FBI dogged him throughout his career, embarrassing itself with elaborate sting operations that went nowhere and leaking rumors and innuendos to the media. It seems the G-men thought Mayor Brown, who was black, didn’t look honest.
It may be the case that, in an ideal world, mayors (and all those who make our laws) would be philosopher-kings à la Plato’s Republic. However, the best of all possible worlds is far from ideal. A mayor is a practitioner of retail politics at the most basic level and is charged with meeting the competing demands of dozens of constituencies. His every waking moment is scrutinized by opponents, political donors, amateur moralists and media critics whose mission in life is to complain. As Willie Brown is reputed to have said, “You're going to be accused of every high crime and low misdemeanor there is.”
De Blasio’s disappointments are not due to high crimes, stupidity or cupidity. I’ve never met the man and am reluctant to engage in psychobabble but he strikes me as someone who is a lazy thinker. He seems enamored with the easy answer and leans on ideology to spare him from the hard work of analysis. It is a frail foundation for solving the complex problems that come to his desk. It’s no way to run a railroad never mind a big city where maddeningly complex issues require a delicate balancing of competing interests. Some tactics will advance a strategy, some will not but you can rarely predict which will turn out to be which. Mistakes are inevitable and part of the management challenge is to identify and scrap them as soon as possible. In governance as in science error is one of our best teachers. No one is perfect at this but Bloomberg was very good. De Blasio is not. He is among the legion of politicians who believe and want you to believe that they do not make mistakes and never change their minds. He also thinks he should be judged solely on his good intentions. He is, in short, a cross between two Al Capp characters, the Schmoo and Joe Btfsplk.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Consider almost all recent politicians who have put themselves forward for the job of Mayor of New York. A very few were talented but had little charisma. Another few had charisma but little talent. Some were good government types, others were scoundrels. Bloomberg was the only one well qualified for the job and he had to switch parties twice to get elected. The fault for this state of affairs rests exclusively with the electorate who allow the parties – every one of them – to emulate Caligula who plotted to appoint his horse as a Roman Senator.
It’s not just the mayors. It’s every office holder above the rank of dog catcher. New York State has had a surprising number of outstanding governors in recent decades but the state government is still the most venal and corrupt in the nation. The prisons are full of bad actors who were elected to positions just below those governors. Other states suffer similar records but New York is Number One. Only Illinois comes close. The system is not working because half of we the people are not paying attention and the other half is looking only through the prism of ideology. When de Blasio was asked why he thought he could get the Presidential nomination, he told reporters, “Just watch. I’ve never lost an election.” To which I reply, in the immortal words of H. L. Mencken, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
After an embarrassing showing in the early 2020 Democratic primary contests, de Blasio dropped out with his tail between his legs and threw his support to Bernie Sanders where his role seemed to be as an attack dog against the other candidates. His principal target was Mike Bloomberg. His principal weapon was twitter and his principal strategy was the Big Lie. Maybe he's dumber than I thought he was.
