Wait till the Bills are due
Blaz, Bratt & Al pals for now
On Saturday, Bill de Blasio’s honeymoon, in full swing before he officially takes the oath of office, took him to the offices of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem, where de Blasio and Sharpton and the incoming police commissioner, Bill Bratton, all looked happier than Hoda and Kathie Lee.
Then on Sunday, de Blasio was saying that he and the family still haven’t decided whether they are going to live in Gracie Mansion, which means the whole city will continue to wait for a puff of smoke to go up out of his current Brooklyn neighborhood when the decision is finally made on that one.
But this is all part of the show with de Blasio these days, part of a big inaugural party that seems to have started already, before he takes over for Mike Bloomberg and does something he has never done in his life. That means govern. You can say Bloomberg never did either before he was mayor, except for the fact that running a company as big and successful as Bloomberg’s was always like running a small country.
It is why this is such a heady time for de Blasio. He can say anything, like he is still running hard on the notion that New York City needs him to fix it or heal it or both, as if the city under Bloomberg has become hopelessly broken over the past 12 years.
It is a false narrative, of course, and a cynical one, has been from the start, even if de Blasio won the election going away. But there is no reason for the change candidate to change anything now, it’s all working for him.
It really is a honeymoon period for him and also a honeymoon period between him and the other Bill, Bratton, one who craves the spotlight and wants to be a star of the city as much as his new boss does. Maybe the best show of all is going to be watching to see if it can work between them, or how long it can last.
That means once de Blasio officially stops running against Bloomberg and once Bratton has to show he can run the NYPD in his second tour as commissioner better than Ray Kelly has. For now Bratton, who can talk the way Michael Phelps can swim, says all the things he needs to say as he stands with the mayor-elect, especially about how things are going to be better than ever in all the neighborhoods of the city, minority or otherwise.
This isn’t about whether Bratton is a good cop, he has to be, are you kidding, he was commissioner in Boston, Los Angeles, now New York twice, a world’s record. But when you talk as much as Bratton does, you can sometimes forget things you have said in the past.
Here was Bratton talking to Crain’s three years ago, and asked the following question:
Crain’s: “If crime started dropping under Mr. Dinkins, how come Mr. Giuliani gets the credit?”
Bratton: “The crime rate would not have dropped as dramatically without Giuliani’s approach. Dinkins made the hires, but didn’t effectively use the officers: They weren’t focused on crime, but on community relations. His administration hoped this would reduce crime. But it doesn’t work like that. Under Giuliani, the NYPD fo- cused its whole being on going after crime.”
The money quote is in the middle there, about how the Dinkins’ administration wasn’t focused on crime, but “community relations.” And that one sounds fantastic, except that all we have been hearing about from both de Blasio and Bratton — and Sharpton — the past week is about, well, community relations. This is about having it both ways, or simply talking out of both sides of your mouth.
All great dramas, and de Blasio ran on the drama of a “tale of two cities,” require both heroes and villains. Clearly de Blasio, and now Bratton, are the heroes come to save the city. And the villains can only be the ones they are saving it from, which means the outgoing mayor and the outgoing police commissioner.
You get the same theme from Sharpton, who acts now like some kind of de facto deputy mayor. Here is something Sharpton wrote in Sunday’s News, backing de Blasio’s choice of Bratton:
“You simply cannot go into a neighborhood that you know nothing about and treat everyone as if he or she is a criminal.” Something else that sounds good, but ignores the fact that there are more minority cops on the streets of New York City than at any time in the city's history.
But at a time when the city’s recent history is rewritten as easily as it is these days, no reason for Sharpton to be different from anybody else around de Blasio. Maybe they all think the honeymoon will last forever. They always do, right?