He boasted that he didn’t get ulcers, he gave them. He declared himself the “mayatollah,” insisted he was a liberal with sanity and called his opponents wackos.
Ed Koch was a Borscht-belt comic and a holy terror, often simultaneously. He was also one of the greatest mayors of modern New York.
He rescued the city from financial ruin — everybody knows that — but he did something else that, in the long run, was more important. By force of personality, he saved the city from the corrosive fear that a broke and battered Gotham would never come back and wasn’t even worth the effort.
As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan told me in a 1984 interview, “History will record Koch as having given back New York City its morale. And that is a massive achievement.”
Indeed it was, and the dense, thriving, cosmopolitan New York that exists today wouldn’t have been possible without Koch. His determined leadership laid the foundation for the success of his successors.
My own relationship with Koch spanned 30 years, not all of them smooth, but we ended as allies and friends. Our final conversation came Wednesday.
He was in the hospital, and I called his office to pass along wishes for a speedy recovery and to say I had seen the documentary film about him called, what else, “Koch.”
When his office later connected us, he sounded weak, but focused. I told him the standing-room-only crowd at Tuesday’s premiere loved the film, which pleased him. He then made the point that director Neil Barsky had given him veto power over any unwanted content.
“I didn’t ask him to change a thing,” Koch said, with clear pride. Not just about the final product, but with his own restraint, given that there were moments in the movie he couldn’t have enjoyed.
Restraint, of course, is not a word usually associated with Koch. He loved to eat almost as much as he loved political conflict. He could curse like the World War II combat veteran he was and loved the limelight that came with saying whatever popped into his head.
Some of it was calculated and some a mistake. He later regretted closing a Harlem hospital that inflamed his relationship with many black New Yorkers.
But time offers proper perspective, and the final roll call is that his accomplishments stood the test of history. Had he failed, New York and the nation would be poorer for it. He was legitimately rewarded for becoming the symbol of the city’s rebirth.
For 12 exhilarating and exhausting years, he was the mayor everywhere, all the time, every day. A generation came of age thinking he really was mayor for life.
The film about him, in which I offer my thoughts on his tenure, recalls the troubled, chaotic city he inherited with his improbable election in 1977. It also captures the larger-than-life personality he used to turn politics into theater.
I confess that I didn’t always enjoy that aspect of him. As the City Hall bureau chief for The New York Times during Koch’s second term, it was my job to be skeptical about his claims and motives.
We had our battles, but he never complained to my bosses. When he had a problem with something I wrote, he would tell me directly. He once snapped at me in public, then summoned me to his office to apologize. “I was hungry, and I get cranky when I’m hungry,” he said flatly. We laughed, and that was that. He was a gracious host to my young son and my father.
Whatever our disagreements, he was a mensch.
He was also amazingly accessible. Although he had daily press conferences, some in his private office, reporters could also get exclusive interviews. If you asked, you invariably found yourself ushered into his office, free to ask anything.
He created a remarkable familiarity largely gone from politics. Mayors now are so scripted and generally hostile to the press that they dole out private face time like it’s gold. It is their loss as much as the public’s.
The result of my time covering City Hall was “I, Koch,” a book that my co-authors and I subtitled a “decidedly unauthorized biography.” The cover illustration of the mayor in a Roman toga, with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Twin Towers behind him, captured our view.
Understandably, years of estranged silence ensued. I went off to write about other things, and he got embroiled in the huge scandal that marred much of his final term.
But contacts, inadvertent at first, began to resume, and I became his editor at another newspaper where he wrote a weekly column. In 2004, I was invited by his inner circle to help organize an exhibit on his mayoralty at the Museum of the City of New York and edit a catalogue of essays titled “New York Comes Back.”
By that time, our conservative-leaning politics were simpatico and we swapped ideas over the phone and occasional lunches. Everything was always on the record and we discussed writing a book together. In a call not long ago, he told me, “You’re doing God’s work.” When I demurred, he said, “I mean it.”
If that’s at all true, it is partly because of the lessons I learned from him. Koch’s fierce devotion to Israel’s security opened my eyes to its vulnerability and the double standard the media applies to the Jewish state. I am deeply grateful.
And despite his sometimes ruthless politics, Koch was generous to others on issues he called matters of conscience, such as abortion. The film captures his exchange with a woman who wants to know how he can possibly support a pro-life Staten Island politician. Koch, ardently pro-choice himself, responds that he would not oppose anyone over a matter of conscience if there was otherwise agreement.
America needs more leaders with such grace.
Koch’s death is an occasion for grief, but not for long. You have to smile when you look at all those pictures showing his delight in public service. And, remember, he got to see the flattering movie that captured it all.
So don’t cry for Ed Koch. He went out in a blaze of attention and deserved applause. He can now rest in peace.