B

Decidedly Incompetent

IN THE BEGINNING

He started life as William Wilhelm. Determined to have a political life, he borrowed a family name – de Blasio – which would appeal to New York’s large Italian-American population rather than the German-derived Wilhelm.

You would think that such a decision came from a calculating man determined to serve his community. Instead we find it was a calculation based on personal ambition alone.

This is not guess work. A series of recently released personal e-mails indicates Bill de Blasio’s overwhelming concern about his image as a so-called progressive and his political future and is an indictment about his real interests.

His early years started well. He moved from the middle-income streets of Brooklyn to serve on the City Council where he proved engaged, representative and competent. He is a big man who is not easily missed and his essentially earnest demeanor and clearly liberal views made him a successful City Councilman. Nothing remarkable emerged from those years but the image was good enough to get him elected as the city’s Public Advocate.

Few holding that job have done anything with it despite being second in line to the Mayor and possessing all kinds of inquiry power. Bill de Blasio didn’t disappoint. He did nothing with it for 4 years serving under Mayor Michael Bloomberg in utter silence. No one knew if he ever came to work and no one cared. It’s the job and de Blasio was perfect for it.

Patiently waiting his turn along with a basketball team’s worth of wanna-bees, Bill de Blasio made his move in 2011-2012 in a run for the Mayoralty. He essentially started in last place and stayed there until the Democratic primary election. He did little or nothing to distinguish himself during the campaign sounding liberal and generally knowledgeable but unburdened by ideas.

De Blasio watched stoically as one by one the contenders in that primary eliminated themselves. On Election night, clearly profiting from a clever advertising campaign which featured his Afro-wearing son and his marriage to an African-American woman, de Blasio came in a winner with just enough margin over second-place Bill Thompson to call for a run-off election which Thompson backed away from. Big B became the Democratic Party’s candidate for Mayor.

He ran a spectacularly colorless campaign but won because he was outdone by his Republican opponent Joseph Lhota, a professional bureaucrat with a strong knowledge of government and an absolutely horrible campaign style.

Four years later after he clearly showed that he was unable to do the job in any area of New York City, he found himself running for reelection against the real estate interests next selection, the Republican candidate by-default, Nicole Malliotakis, an inexperienced Assemblywoman from Staten Island who had entered the race simply to get her name known to New Yorkers. He was re-elected handily.

SIX YEARS LATER AND COUNTING…

Here’s what we now know. He’s done nothing for New York. Nothing. He talks a progressive game but not a single policy decision has worked to serve the people in New York who need help.

Schools still cannot graduate more than 25% of students who can do college work without remediation or get a good job. His first Chancellor of Education had already failed Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein but he brought her out of retirement to do a job she couldn’t do. His most recent selection of a Chancellor held three jobs in six years in such cities as San Francisco and Houston and continues to remind New Yorkers that he is newly on the job and will get things done. His charm exceeds his talents. He will be making excuses until he is replaced by a new Mayor in two years.

De Blasio’s handling of the NYCHA reality borders on the criminal. His lies in protecting his selection of a chairwoman (a friend of his wife) are just as bad as her lies to everyone including the Federal government – which are indeed criminal.

Truthfully NYCHA’s disintegration has been steady over the years and Mayor Bloomberg did little or nothing about it during his 12 years as Mayor. But that is understandable. Bloomberg had concerns about New Yorkers’ health habits, but easily ignored the needs of a half a million people who he simply didn’t ‘see’ though all he had to do was look.

He didn’t but we thought the new ‘progressive’ Mayor would. He certainly talked and talked and talked a great game about the needs of the ‘other’ New Yorkers in his tale of two cities. But here is where de Blasio commits his greatest crime: he talks from both sides of his mouth and believing anything he says and expecting anything he does to succeed…are two mistakes.

NYCHA rots and he continues to lie about what he will do about it. The Administration of Children’s Services remains a disaster. The New York City Subways careen towards failure. Major city streets contain rows of empty stores. Streets that are fixed quickly fall apart. Trees in City Parks fall down on people. The Sanitation Commissioner now has the duty of cleaning up the lead in NYCHA apartments but there is a new Commissioner of Democracy to see that residents vote. Really.

But New York continues to be New York despite having a Mayor who many old enough to remember believe is the worst in 70 years.

One of these days Bill will realize that historically once you have been Mayor of New York, your political career is over. You may try for something else but you will fail.

Perhaps his real estate benefactors will give de Blasio a lobbying job. He can’t be an administrator like Joe Lhota but he can talk. Perhaps his wife will make him her campaign manager when she begins her own public political career with a run for Brooklyn Borough President even though she remembers that he failed with Hillary Clinton and that in truth, she has been a co-conspirator as his Number One Mayoral advisor.

De Blasio will continue his progressive double-talk even as he bungles his way through the next two years.

But here is the ultimate truth: New York will survive the Mayoralty of Big B as America will survive his birds-of-a-feather reality show host of an ever-present POTUS.