I suppose, if I had a car, I could slap a “Don’t blame me — I voted for Lhota” sticker on the bumper and join the almost giddy pile-on that’s now got 6-foot-5 Bill de Blasio up to his neck in sour negativity.
Though I disagree with de Blasio on plenty and rolled my eyes through his idiotic war on Uber, I just can’t bring myself to do it.
Perceptions matter, and de Blasio’s public performance has, in the minds of some, already produced a powerful narrative of a city that’s drowning as its soft, hopelessly liberal leader flails to stay afloat. So the guy who won 73% of the vote in a (low-turnout) election now has, according to Quinnipiac, a 44% approval rating, with 47% of voters saying he doesn’t deserve a second term. (Note: Mike Bloomberg’s job-approval numbers were worse at this point in his first term.)
But the pessimistic narrative — the craving to label the man who sees things in Dickensian terms as Dinkinsian — is ahead of reality. Well ahead of it. Here in the real world, there’s good reason for ongoing optimism about New York City’s future. We all need to stop, breathe and admit that fact.
I make no apologies for de Blasio’s sometimes clumsy stagecraft. He has hurt himself by repeatedly showing up late, or failing to hold open town hall meetings to mix it up with citizens, or going to the gym during a police and fire department standoff with an armed felon.
It grates on the ear when at practically every turn he uses sweeping ideological language, desperate to wedge almost everything into the frame of his supposedly historic fight against the “tale of two cities” in which we live. We like our mayors to be blunt communicators and, above all else, pragmatists.
There’s also a tonal disconnect. I see New York as a tremendous success story, a place full of immigrant strivers. It annoys me that de Blasio seems to dourly harp on the problem of inequality rather than celebrating the mobility that more meaningfully defines the city.
In image projection he has been his own worst enemy. But let’s be perfectly clear: It’s not meaningfully damaging to the city.
Yes, it is troubling that 311 complaints about homelessness are up dramatically since last year. And that as ridership has shot up, the subways aren’t performing like they need to (that, by the way, is the state-run MTA’s job, not the city’s).
It should also worry us that just a third of voters say the city’s quality of life is “good” or “very good,” the lowest number measured since pollsters started asking the question way back in 1997. It’s impossible to say why New Yorkers feel this way because the poll didn’t ask what was on people’s minds. Regardless, the numbers, along with the steady stream of magnified stories about one supposed abomination or another, play right into the feelings of people who staunchly opposed de Blasio from before day one.
All of this is necessary preamble to make a point that, in our current political climate, we need to tell ourselves over and over again: Leaders’ personality quirks are not fatal flaws. Fumbles in optics (I hate that word) aren’t substantive failures. And anecdotes, no matter how symbolic they may seem, aren’t data, not in a city of 8.4 million people.
If they were, I would hold Giuliani and Bloomberg accountable for the fact that my close friends and family — three in total — were attacked on the street during their terms. Nothing like that has happened under de Blasio yet. I don’t personally feel any less safe now than I did five, 10 or 20 years ago, nor do the people I know. In fact, I feel safer.
That jibes with the statistics. Overall crime is falling. Shootings and murders have ticked up, but remain near historic lows (murders are at the same level they were in Bloomberg’s last year). That’s not good, but it’s hardly a sign of profound slippage. Especially not given the fact that Bill Bratton has tried to reform the police to produce fewer bruised bones and egos as they go about their vital job.
The city’s economy is surprisingly healthy; jobs are being produced at a rapid clip. The tech sector is surging. The streets are generally clean. The parks — at least the ones I’ve attended a dozen times this summer — are well-maintained. If you believe the test scores, the schools are a bit better than they were two years ago, though not meaningfully different.
De Blasio has boosted spending too fast, but local government is registering surpluses.
The last fiscal year saw the financing of more than 20,000 affordable apartments (created or maintained), the most in a quarter-century. In huge numbers, people still want to live in the city; that’s why rents keep rising.
None of this is cheerleading. These are plain facts.
Of course, the mayor isn’t responsible for all this, though supporters and detractors alike need to admit that he’s notched some serious policy victories. He has extended pre-kindergarten to tens of thousands of families. He’s expanded sick-pay and other protections to low-income workers.
He won big reforms to a crucially important housing tax abatement to try to accelerate the production of affordable housing. With an approach more comprehensive than anything that’s been tried before, he’s trying to make streets safer for pedestrians.
Meantime, he is trying to stop hornets’ nests that were largely ignored by his predecessor from stinging many more people. Rikers Island is a dangerous mess. Lots of the city’s public housing stock is poorly maintained or downright falling apart, and NYCHA is only finally getting around to taking aggressive steps to try to balance its books, like the (not especially liberal idea of) allowing private development on its property. Homelessness, which rose substantially under Bloomberg, is a growing problem — one that government hasn’t dealt with effectively, mainly because it hasn’t smartly attacked the mental-health problems that plague many who sleep on the streets.
The city has profound problems. Beyond the big think on which he constantly harps, we don’t yet know whether de Blasio has a strong enough no-nonsense, pragmatic streak to make the city work better, in ways small and large, for most of its people.
We have four-year terms for a reason. It’s tough to get an instant read on whether a chief executive has the persistence and ingenuity to fix some huge and complicated problems.
But let us not pretend New York City is sliding back to its depressing past under Bill de Blasio’s watch. All in all, the patient is in very good shape; it is petty for the doctor to complain repeatedly about her hairdo.
