In their 20 combined years at City Hall, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg routinely protected the police from political attacks and hucksters. Even when an officer was involved in questionable conduct, their first instinct was to remind New Yorkers that cops, like everybody else, are presumed innocent.
In his first months in office, Mayor de Blasio is reversing that relationship. Already, the NYPD has rescued him twice from serious controversies, with top cop Bill Bratton forced to use his credibility to protect the mayor from embarrassment and charges of hypocrisy.
It is a curious turnabout, not least because de Blasio based much of his campaign on an anti-police agenda. He attacked stop-and-frisk as racial profiling, and proclaimed that, under his administration, “we will not break the law to enforce the law.”
It’s a catchy phrase, but de Blasio’s actions in two remarkable incidents are mocking the promise of evenhandedness.
The first involved the sudden release of a de Blasio supporter from jail following a late-night mayoral call to the NYPD. Amid charges of special treatment, de Blasio defended himself but a strangely-silent Bratton ducked the controversy for as long as he could.
It wasn’t until a week after the Feb. 10 phone call became public that Bratton finally said he had “no problem” with his boss.
“He can call anybody he wants, any time he wants,” the commissioner added, with the mayor standing beside him.
The second rescue followed the WCBS video showing de Blasio’s police-driven SUV speeding and running two stop signs while he sat in the front seat. That was just two days after the mayor released his “Vision Zero” plan for cutting traffic deaths, where he declared that “it’s about each of us taking greater responsibility every time we get behind the wheel or step out on the street.”
For added measure, The Post photographed him jaywalking.
Just as the phone call on behalf of his supporter did, the video and photo sparked charges that de Blasio was guilty of saying one thing and doing another. So once again, he called 911 for a lifeline.
After City Hall stiff-armed all questions, de Blasio met with Bratton Friday, and the commissioner later told reporters the speeding case was closed.
“In terms of what I saw in that video, [it] did not raise significant concerns for me,” Bratton said. “We are not going to be questioning those officers.”
Finally, on Monday, de Blasio himself said “no one’s above the law,” but again kicked the can back to the cops. “I don’t tell the NYPD how to do their work when it comes to protecting me. They’re the experts,” he said.
The incidents might help de Blasio and Bratton bond, but both are suffering knocks to their reputations. Bratton had a reluctant, prisoner-of-war look as he defended the mayor, and once dodged reporters’ questions by jumping into a waiting car and closing the door.
The mayor looks even worse. His decision to use the Police Department he denounced as a character witness makes him appear more opportunistic than principled, with even liberal Democrat Comptroller Scott Stringer saying the call to the police was “problematic.”
And de Blasio’s commitment to street safety seems insincere when his own behavior is the kind he calls reckless in others. His tendency to lecture in imperious tones doesn’t help.
It is still early in the term, and the missteps may be mere footnotes in time. But for now, they are defining de Blasio’s principles and management style in unflattering ways.
The mayor, sensing the danger of a hardening narrative, criticized reporters Monday for their interest in the two stories. He said he wants to talk about things “that fundamentally affect people’s lives,” but that “too much of the time, the debate veers away into, you know, sideshows.”
Ah, yes, blame the media. That always works.
Wrong time to slash defense
Imagine you wake up and discover you’re president. The day begins with a national security briefing on global hot spots.
Ukraine is in turmoil, aides report, the slaughter continues in Syria, and al Qaeda is expanding in Africa. Overnight, Egypt’s government quit, the Taliban slaughtered 21 Afghan police officers, Iraq signed a weapons deal with Iran, and Tehran’s mullahs vowed to keep enriching uranium.
North Korea is threatening to turn South Korea into cinders, China is preparing its military for a war with Japan, and Russia wants to reassemble the Soviet Union. Oh, and Venezuela could be on the verge of a civil war.
Do you respond by saying, “Let’s cut our military?”
Of course not — unless you are Barack Obama.
The president’s push to slash the army back to pre-World War II levels seems too ridiculous to be true, but, sadly, that’s his plan.
It’s not just that size matters. So does timing.
The world already is spinning out of control as America abdicates its leadership role, yet Obama wants to retreat further. The result will be more mayhem and aggression.
As history teaches, pennies saved now will cost dollars and lives later. The world that supposedly wants America to go home suddenly demands it come back when trouble knocks.
We usually go because nobody else will and because that’s who we are.
A Gallup poll shows that 53 percent of Americans believe Obama is not respected by leaders around the world, while only 41 percent think he is. That is a far cry from 2009, when 67 percent thought he was widely respected and only 20 percent did not.
Those were the days when Hope & Change would remake the world. Now we’ll be lucky to survive three more years of Obamaism.
A liberal dose of self-delusion
In his new book, “The Revolt Against the Masses,” Fred Siegel approvingly quotes a critic who said liberals have a “psychological mechanism” that lets them turn their own failings “into moral judgments against society.”
That mechanism is on full display with the swan songs of Alec Baldwin and Piers Morgan. After butting heads with reality and getting only headaches, both concluded that reality is to blame.
“I think America’s more f–ked up now than it’s ever been,” Baldwin told New York magazine in his goodbye rant against everyone and everything.
Morgan, a Brit who’s losing his low-rated CNN show, was obsessive about gun control and had the habit of “peering down his nose at the unruly colonies and wondering how to bring the savages to heel,” a New York Times columnist wrote.
I wish Baldwin and Morgan good luck — somewhere far, far away. Maybe they’d be happy on Mars?
Golden moldies
With Michigan Democrat John Dingell announcing, at age 87, that he won’t seek re-election to Congress, the herd of “Old Bulls” is thinning. Here’s hoping one of the remaining octogenarians, Charlie Rangel, follows Dingell to the exit. Congress and Harlem would be better off.