What Makes a Mayor?

New York City will be electing a whole new swath of municipal office-holders next year, thanks to term limits. Most of the city council, the borough presidents, and the city-wide office holders will change -- including, first and formost, the mayor.

The mayor of any city is a real-life human being and human beings, as we know, aren't perfect. Yet New Yorkers love the idea of a "perfect mayor", someone who not only runs the city but also embodies it.

The mayor of New York City is expected to be many things: a day-to-day manager ensuring the smooth delivery of government services as well as taking charge in an emergency; a long-term visionary and leader who moves the city into a better place (less crime, more affordable housing, better schools, cleaner streets, etc., anything that improves the quality life and experience of living here); an advocate and cheerleader who promotes the city's image and interests to the rest of the country and the world; and a big personality, a larger-than-life character who is as much a showman (or showwoman), a performer, as much as a politician or a leader. 

The qualities that New Yorkers want in mayor are many -- it's a tall order to be come Hizzoner. The perfect mayoral DNA hasn't been generated yet. 

Fiorello LaGuardia is, for many, the model of a modern NYC mayor and many of his successors (like Koch and Giuliani) have aped his big personality style if not his decency and competence. Others have been a conscious reaction to that type of mayor -- Lindsay, Dinkins, and, in their way, Bloomberg and De Blasio have shown that this city can sometimes elect a more genteel and down-to-earth mayor. 

It's also axiomatic that mayors are destined never to rise to higher office (governor, senate, president) and that they better not show that they are anything less than 200% focused on just being mayor (leaving town, running for another office, brings mayors a cropper).

It's impossible to tell what makes for a successful mayor because the times they govern in, and the challanges they face, are so different. But it's almost inevitable that, after years of controversy, tough decisions, bad luck, whatever, NYC mayors often leave office unpopular. History can sometimes, however, be much kinder to them in the long run. And their personality, their mascot role, become less important -- it's what they left their successors to build on that's deemed most important.

The recent death of Mayor David Dinkins is a huge case in point. When he left office in 1993, and for years afterwards, the common wisdom is that he left the city crime-ridden broken down mess that Rudy Giuliani came in and fixed. But a closer look at the record shows that Dinkins bequeathed the man destined to become an adulterous, bankrupt, impeached one-term loser president's lawyer a much stronger city than was previously appreciated: under Dinkins the police force increased, crime was actually falling greatly, Times Square was alreay changing, the city was improving. But the perception of it hadn't yet changed, and Rudy sucked up all the credit.

Thus it has been and will always be so. Life isn't fair, politics is less than fair, and being mayor of this town is both the greatest honor and one of the most unfair jobs any New Yorker can possibly get.