We may have missed the deadline for evaluating Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first 100 days in office, but we know he’ll forgive us as the champion of fashionable lateness.
As a neophyte mayor he can claim bragging rights to a reform of the city’s demeaning stop-and-frisk policy, paid sick leave for some of our most vulnerable workers in low-paying industries, such as food services, and the adoption of universal pre-K.
These are big achievements for the top honcho of the nation’s largest city in the early stages of his first term, but some of the glow has been eclipsed by critics fussing over his decidedly not-on-time schedule.
In a recent New York Times interview, the mayor said punctuality was sorely overrated and justified his late arrival at public events by pointing out that former President George W. Bush was always on time.
“Unfortunately, he left the nation in worse shape than how he found it,” the mayor said of the two-term GOPer.
Here was another case of our mayor throwing a public official under the bus, where Dubya found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg among the wheels of the Q32. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democratic lonsman, is still waiting at the curb despite his end runs around de Blasio on taxing the rich for universal pre-K and charter schools.
De Blasio is a talented and inspiring leader who should have enough faith in his vision for Queens and the rest of the city to lay the groundwork for his own legacy and not resort to the blame game.
That said, he has every reason to be angry at Bloomberg for sticking him with 152 expired municipal labor contracts.
But back to the issue of tardiness.
Woody Allen said “80 percent of life is showing up,” although the quintessential New Yorker never specified when that should be.
Nevertheless, time is money in this city, and the mayor is facing some punctuality hardliners who turn on the countdown clocks before every mayoral event.
The late Ed Koch was supposedly notoriously late, so why jump all over Mayor Bill?
Perhaps because he has an ambitious agenda for the city as a progressive and there’s a danger that chronic lateness has already distracted from his message.
New York is a tough city and de Blasio needs some tough love in the form of a scheduler who will get him to his public on time. This will free him to appoint his last commissioners and maybe even move into Gracie Mansion.
