Meet the new de Blasio
Mayor de Blasio visited the Daily News Editorial Board Tuesday carrying justifiable pride in having built a universal pre-K program and working with police to drive down crime to new record lows — and a healthy, if belated, sense of contrition for disappointments of his first years in office.
His mea culpas aren’t as forthright as Fiorello LaGuardia’s famous “When I make a mistake, it’s a beaut” — but we welcome de Blasio’s admission, on a number of fronts, that he could and should have done better.
He now acknowledges that he contributed to a cold war with police after the death of Eric Garner by speaking out too late against the vicious verbal attacks some demonstrators hurled at police.
And says he wishes he hadn’t set an impossible-to-meet deadline for Build It Back home reconstruction following Hurricane Sandy, which left suffering homeowners let down.
Of his tweet committing right out of the gate, as part of his 90-day “symbols of hate” review, to pry off the plaque on lower Broadway marking the ticker-tape parade for World War I hero turned Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain, he says: “It was a mistake.” That didn’t correctly express his belief that the marker, like all other statues, ought to be reviewed on a single standard, not prejudged.
While the man, who still fashions himself dragonslayer of the evil forces of inequality, continues to carry no shortage of grandiose visions, we are happy to meet this somewhat humbler Bill de Blasio, showing maturity too scarcely in evidence in his first term in office, in which he saw few limits to the power of his City Hall to cure all ills, and spent accordingly.
Biggest case in point: De Blasio the idealist wanted to make it easier for needy New Yorkers to enter homeless shelters, where, at the time of his first campaign, around 50,000 took refuge, and offered rent vouchers to help the homeless move out of shelters.
De Blasio the realist has seen the numbers in shelters surge past 60,000 and spending jump 68%, to $1.7 billion, and now touts his efforts to ensure — Bloomberg-style — that shelters remain a last resort when other options are exhausted.
And now concedes, after a course correction that “took too long,” homelessness is his to alleviate, not solve. “We’re talking about a long war.”
Years ago, de Blasio the idealist said his pledge to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing “is going to have a far-reaching impact on the people of this city . . . . So people can actually afford to live in this city.”
De Blasio the realist allows: “I knew there was going to be even more demand” than funding allows, and “It’s impossible to be alive and awake and talking to New Yorkers and not feeling the frustration over affordability.”
The words of a mayor sagely rebalancing expectations for the world he seeks with the world that is.