Well, now we know why Mayor de Blasio waited two years before he started doing radio call-in shows: He just can’t keep his cool when he gets tough questions.
On Friday’s Brian Lehrer show, de Blasio lectured one caller, “Please leave your conspiracy theories at home,” and accused another of “the worst of Monday morning quarterbacking.”
He also answered some harsh attacks from city Comptroller Scott Stringer with his own cutting remark: “I think it’s breathtaking how little the comptroller understands about this issue.”
This, at the end of a week where he’d also slammed a New York Times reporter who dared to pose an insufficiently slavish question — and all in the wake of his now almost-routine sneers at this newspaper when Post reporters ask him something.
Yes, past mayors have gotten plenty testy with the press and with radio callers. Rudy Giuliani practically made an art of it.
But Giuliani was ideologically at odds with most of the press corps, and challenged the city’s entire liberal status quo on everything from crime and policing to welfare to education. De Blasio, by contrast, is in agreement with established lefty opinion on nearly every issue.
And with Rudy, the combativeness was a longstanding feature: “In your face” was a major part of his public personality, for better or worse, long before he won office.
However rude this mayor might be in private, the public Bill de Blasio has played nice. His somewhat goofy likeability puts a warm haze over whatever doubts a voter, or even a hardened editorial writer, might have.
Right now, despite all his missteps and scandals, the mayor’s not looking that vulnerable as he heads into next year’s re-election fight. But Stringer’s not the only rival now testing the waters.
And if de Blasio keeps turning nasty whenever he’s challenged, he’s going to start looking like a soft target even if no indictments drop.