The best description of last year’s presidential campaign came from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Trying to rally the troops at the Democratic convention, Patrick warned that “Democrats don’t deserve to win just because Republicans deserve to lose.”
Apply the logic to the New York mayoral race and it comes out this way: Neither Michael Bloomberg nor Bill Thompson has made the case for victory. It’s too bad one of them has to win.
With three weeks to go, this is the race that isn’t. It is a dreary, spiritless meander through the weeds, wholly divorced from the city’s reality.
The next mayor faces the most dire fiscal problems since the 1970s, yet neither Bloomberg nor Thompson will admit it.
Instead of straight talk about the expanding sea of red ink, we get happy talk and promises about more government goodies.
Recession? What recession?
Bloomy, after eight years of extravagance, spends $100 million to tell us he needs four more years. Thompson reserves his passion for narrow-bore ethnic and class appeals.
Each keeps up the pretense that his election will yield a new golden age in Gotham. Their promises would make Bernie Madoff blush.
Neither will tell the truth about the unsustainable imbalance between falling revenues and rising costs. To do so would force them to lay out how they will confront it.
In their timid little hearts, they fear the facts will scare away voters. And so they conspire to hide them.
A modicum of decency requires them to prepare the public for massive reductions in spending and/or large tax hikes. Decency requires them to stop making promises they know they can’t keep.
Consider this: New York state is effectively bankrupt. Tax revenues are falling faster than autumn leaves and Albany will probably soon run out of cash.
That means state aid to the city must shrink, and not by a little. The ax will fall hard on education aid, for example, reversing the spike of recent years.
Two years ago, the state gave the city $7.9 billion for schools. Last year, it was $8.6 billion and the city expected $8.9 billion this year.
It will get most of that, but only because about $700 million of federal stimulus money was thrown into the breach.
At one point, the city expected $9.8 billion next year. It won’t get anywhere near that, but the candidates won’t tell you. The expectation in Albany is that the winner will play the victim and then blame the state.
By the way, I got those numbers from George Sweeting, deputy director of the city’s Independent Budget Office. Bloomberg and Thompson have the same data. It’s time they tell us how they will deal with it.
The 1977 mayoral race also took place during a financial crisis, but Ed Koch confounded the Democratic establishment by saying no to the unions. He promised to trim the fat and end the rip-offs.
He didn’t just win the election. He won it with a clear mandate to take action.
That’s the kind of leader we need now. Is there one in the house?
It’s all downhill for Nobel winner Cheatin’ Charlie gets this one right
When it comes to Barack Obama, there are two kinds of people. One still believes he walks on water, the other knows he’s just a talented politician.
The five-man Nobel peace panel obviously belongs to the faith-based camp. Count them as slow learners.
Yet there’s no sense cursing them, for they inadvertently have provided a valuable service: Their award signifies the high-water mark of Obama-mania. The prize is so preposterous, it can only hasten the awakening of others to his inflated stature.
Like an investor who buys into a bubble just before it bursts, the panel’s declaration that Obama has done more for peace than anyone on the planet does not stand even half-serious scrutiny. The instant result is a simultaneous diminishing of both the prize and the man.
Arriving when half of America disapproves of Obama’s performance as president and others are having buyer’s remorse, the prize smacks of a desperate bid to prop him up. Because it comes from lefty foreigners who look with contempt on values most Americans cherish, the award serves to further distance Obama from his nation’s political heartland.
The very things the Nobel folks applaud him for — “a new climate of international politics” — go to the heart of suspicions Obama is ashamed of his country and aims to unilaterally lower its guard.
Indeed, the committee cited Obama’s push for nuclear disarmament. That’s certainly a noble goal, but foolish and dangerous if only the good guys buy in.
Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy scolded Obama for being starry-eyed on the subject, telling him, “We live in a real world, not a virtual world, and the real world expects us to make decisions.”
Sarkozy’s barb came as Obama hesitates to confront Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, but it could also have applied to his second-guessing the Afghanistan strategy. Only months after declaring it a “war of necessity” and vowing to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, Obama finds the fight difficult and is reportedly redefining the mission to target only al Qaeda.
Dreams of peace built on appeasement litter history’s battlefields. As Ronald Reagan put it, “The search for peace must go on, but we have a better chance of finding it if we maintain our strength while we’re searching.”
Reagan said that at West Point shortly after taking office in 1981. He went on to win the Cold War and helped liberate hundreds of millions of people from the clutches of tyranny.
Now there’s a man worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
Cheatin’ Charlie gets this one right
Once again, Charlie “Tax Cheat” Rangel has a point. His office pooh-poohed the decision by the House Ethics Committee to expand its probe into his finances, saying it’s no big deal.
I agree. The only thing that matters is whether a prosecutor has the guts to make a criminal case. So far, none has emerged. That’s the scandal.
Obama’s no-award award
Obama aide David Axelrod, after the Nobel shocker, promises, “The goal is not to win awards.”
Whew. I feel better already.