[From article]
New Yorkers have an outsized expectation that a mayor can be everywhere and have an answer for almost everything all the time. It’s an unreasonable demand, and it explains why being mayor of Gotham is considered the second toughest job in America.
But successful mayors manage that expectation through hard work, active engagement with ordinary citizens and a fierce sense of patriotism about the city. It is the essence of leadership and even when they inevitably fail on occasion, they are not blamed for lack of effort or attention.
That’s a mayor’s contract with New York, and it’s where de Blasio is coming up short. He is chasing rainbows and tilting at windmills instead of minding the store.
New Yorkers see a deterioration in public spaces, an explosion of disheveled vagrants and have a growing belief that the mayor isn’t as committed to fixing those things as he should be.
[. . .]
In a foolish bid to make himself a national player, de Blasio spent nearly four days in Iowa during the presidential primary. The trip was a bust, and he returned to discover that the unholy alliance he forged to reduce the popular horse carriages was collapsing.
This was no routine policy failure. Beyond giving him a political black eye, the acrimonious collapse exposed both his arrogance and incompetence. Most troubling, the misbegotten venture galvanized suspicions that his is a pay-to-play administration.
In a naked bid to deliver a promise to donors who funded his 2013 campaign, the mayor tried to buy off the Teamsters union that represents the carriage drivers and skeptical members of the City Council. Knowing he had a weak hand and that disclosure of the details would doom the deal, he tried to speed it through the council.
[. . .]
It’s an odd hill to die on. The public offers wide support for the carriages, and rejects the mayor’s vaporous claims that the animals are treated cruelly.
Yet de Blasio threw facts to the wind, insisting he would fix a problem most people don’t believe exists. As such, the episode is a perfect metaphor for his tenure.
Time and again, he concocts sweeping visions of unfairness and wrongdoing that are wildly exaggerated or beyond the job he was hired to do. He sees a racist police force, greedy charter schools, unfair Uber drivers and now cruel carriage drivers. On all those, the mayor is living in a world disconnected from most New Yorkers’.
[. . .]
Something is rotten and I believe the episode warrants a criminal investigation.
[. . .]
A prosecutor needs to find the facts and reveal the truth.
http://nypost.com/2016/02/06/de-blasio-gets-knocked-off-his-high-horse/
De Blasio gets knocked off his high horse
By Michael Goodwin
February 6, 2016 | 10:05pm
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