Among a flood of forgettable statements from mayoral candidates, this one was different. Following a spate of weekend shootings, Bill Thompson declared that, “Our communities have had enough. The violence must end.”
He went on to say that “we must have safe streets” and promised that “nothing is going to stop me” from making that happen as mayor.
The remarks were striking because, if they talk about crime at all, city Democrats usually limit themselves to denouncing hate crimes or suggest that the solution is more social programs. That is extra true when they are locked in a primary battle like this one, where unions and the most liberal voters hold sway.
But Thompson has strayed off that reservation repeatedly, with the result that he is the closest thing to a law-and-order candidate in the Democratic field.
He refuses to call for the elimination of stop-and-frisk, saying it is a “useful policing tool” that should be reformed to end abuses. Breaking with his rivals, he supports an inspector general who would report to the police commissioner. And he wants to hire at least 2,000 more officers, for a total of 37,000, saying the force should never be smaller than that.
“I haven’t taken stop-and-frisk off the table because we can’t allow crime to come back,” he told me yesterday. “People in every neighborhood want to be safe. They don’t want to worry about their children being shot and mugged.”
As the only black candidate seeking the party’s nomination, Thompson’s approach is not appreciated by Al Sharpton and others who take a harder edge toward cops.
But Thompson’s stance largely has been consistent for the last year, despite the NYPD becoming a pinata among his rivals. Even Attorney General Eric Holder’s support for an outside monitor didn’t change Thompson’s tune.
While charging the department has “stubbornly refused” to reform stop-and-frisk, he neither supported nor disagreed with Holder, saying only a monitor wouldn’t be necessary in a Thompson administration.
In many ways, the former comptroller’s view on police and crime reflects the basic rationale of his candidacy. Deficient in the theater of politics and even-tempered by nature, he portrays himself as the only adult in the room. Or, as he says, “I’m the common-sense candidate who can run the city.”
So far, the approach hasn’t clicked, with his polls stuck in low double digits. He insists he’s not worried, and most professionals think he and Council Speaker Christine Quinn will qualify for a runoff.
Thompson is also staking out a moderate position on taxes, saying yesterday that raising them “would be a last resort.” When I pressed on his definition of “last resort,” he answered, “Keeping the city solvent.”
He argues that reducing fines on small businesses will lead to a growth in jobs, and thus more revenues. When I suggested he was becoming a supply-sider, he laughed and said, “No, definitely not.”
Still, such talk reinforces the sense that Thompson is not as unhappy with the Bloomberg years as some of his rhetoric might suggest. He lost to the mayor in 2009 by five points, but appreciates the fact that low crime is key to the economy and the quality of life. Indeed, it was nearly a year ago that he first told me of his support for a large, aggressive police force.
“The thing that has helped to transform the city the most in my lifetime is the reduction of crime,” he said last July. “It is important that we stay vigilant.”
Repeating a point he made four years ago, Thompson says he would replace Ray Kelly as commissioner, and told me he has talked crime strategy with Bill Bratton, Rudy Giuliani’s first commissioner, and Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College, among others. He said he doesn’t have a commissioner in mind if he gets the chance to hire one, but he does have a clear goal — and the right one.
“There are a number of things we can do to keep crime down,” he said. After a pause, he added, “I think we can drive it down even further.”
Obama, enough ‘blame’ excuses
“I’m no Dick Cheney,” sayeth Barack Obama. Now that he’s cleared that up, again, perhaps Obama can tell us who he is.
In his fifth year in the Oval Office, the president still defines himself by who he isn’t. Mostly, he reminds us he’s not George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. It’s a tiresome tic and doubly grating because of his insufferable air of moral superiority.
That was the gist of his defense of national security surveillance programs of the sort he denounced as a candidate.
“Some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney.’ Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock, and barrel,’” Obama said in a TV interview.
In case his mangled syntax left any doubt of his superiority, Obama added, “My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?”
By that he means the secret court system that rarely turns down an administration request for private phone and Internet records, nor is anyone there to argue against the administration. It’s a system he inherited from you know who.
The problem is that Obama remains ambivalent about his job. He came into office apologizing for America, and he’s stuck being commander-in-chief of the lone superpower in a time of war. He says the war is over while he oversees a vast spying machine and personally selects which terror suspects die by drone.
His consolation — and coded message to the far left — is that he’s not Bush or Cheney. You know, those horrible people who captured and interrogated prisoners at Gitmo instead of blowing them to smithereens.
Only in the mind of Obama is his way more humane.
Assad shows true colors
War made Bashar al-Assad an honest man.
Masquerading as a reformer at the same time he sponsored terror groups and approved the assassination of Lebanon’s prime minister, the Butcher of Syria has stopped pretending and started warning the West not to arm his opponents.
“If Europeans deliver weapons, terror will arrive in Europe’s back yard,” he told a German newspaper.
His confession is another black mark against Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department. She said Assad was a “reformer” in 2011, soon after the uprising started. At the time, 60 protestors had been killed by his thugs. Now the death toll surpasses 90,000.
Threats are status Cuo
He did it again. Gov. Cuomo is threatening to invoke a Moreland Act probe of the Legislature if lawmakers don’t support his agenda.
By one count, this marks the sixth time Cuomo made the same threat. All five previous times, he backed down without acting.
Wake me when he actually does something.