So my favorite newspaper wants Gov. Andrew Cuomo to drag Mayor Bill de Blasio out of City Halland drop him on the curb — and, man, wouldn’t that be glorious!
Think Gov. Godzilla vs. Mayor Mothra, with ’Zilla ripping off ’Ra’s wings in the opening credits — then endlessly torturing the big fella just for the joy of it.
What? You say you’ve seen that one before? Ha. Haven’t we all?
De Blasio arguably is the worst thing to happen to New York City since the Brits chased George Washington off Manhattan in 1776.
Kaiser Wilhelm has stacked up many reasons to deep-six him — beginning with the “for sale” sign that went up on City Hall early on, to the slow advance of chaos in the streets and on the subways, to the ongoing bitter racialization of the city’s schools, and much, much more.
The mayor is going to have a lot to answer for when he leaves office — whenever that may be.
More’s the pity, but Cuomo went on TV Monday morning and — despite the wise counsel of this newspaper — made it clear that he prefers later to sooner. There was some sage, presumably high-minded head-nodding at that point, but who really knows why the governor does anything?
With Cuomo, politics always comes first, policy is optional — and, in this case, he simply intends to have de Blasio to kick around some more.
And then came this, which must have chilled de Blasio’s blood, delivered right after Cuomo told his television interviewers that the mayor’s job was safe:
“I will do my job. Anything you need in New York City, I am there — I am always there — and I’ll do my job the way I promised the people of the state that I will and the way I have. And it will be OK.”
Hey, Mr. Mayor, who needs Big Brother when you have a governor who promises to be “always there” for you? To do his job?
To make everything “OK”?
At your expense.
No governor has ever removed a New York City mayor — though Franklin Roosevelt came close with Jimmy Walker in 1932. And while the state Constitution is quite clear on the governor’s power to evict, the grounds for doing so are ill-defined. That is, not defined at all. Certainly there is no mention of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in that section of the document.
Presumably, then, a bill of particulars could be cobbled from de Blasio’s indolence, apathy, lack of attention to detail, chronic tardiness, inability to translate simple rhetoric into coherent policy, bizarre hard-left politics, ludicrous presidential ambitions and the fact that he’s a Red Sox fan.
(In a just world, the Red Sox bit alone would be sufficient.)
Plus Blas came within a whisker’s width of being indicted for campaign-finance violations — and seems to have learned nothing from the experience. So add that to the list.
Not a pretty picture.
But look at it from Cuomo’s perspective. He’s got to be wondering whether a sleepy, bad mayor might be better for him than a wide-awake, obnoxiously activist mayor.
De Blasio is leaving in a couple of years anyway, the potential replacement pool is belligerently woke — and a newly elected mayor with what’s sure to be an aggressive agenda would present Cuomo with inconvenient issues.
And that mayor would be much less likely than de Blasio to put up with Cuomo’s ceaseless bullying. Win-win for Albany’s apex predator.
Thus does de Blasio stay, the city’s slow decline continues and New York’s prospects for a high-drama, epically entertaining political summer go by the boards.
Gotham will survive all this — survive de Blasio — of course. After all, didn’t Gen. Washington make a comeback?
But it remains that Andrew Cuomo is no fun at all.
This piece originally appeared at the New York Post
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Bob McManus is a contributing editor of City Journal. He retired as editorial page editor of the New York Post in 2013 and has since worked as a freelance editor, columnist, and writer.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post