Eric Adams on The New Yorker Radio Hour

Brooklyn Borough President and NYC Mayor-presumptive Eric Adams just did a long interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker on the magazine's radio show/podcast. In this interview, Adams refers to the city as "dysfunctional" and how he plans to make it functional.

It's the kind of high-flying rhetoric, the kind of Ialonecanfixit braggadocio that all aspiring chief executives in government promise when on the cusp of power. They yammer on about how "the system is broken" but some way, some how, with some magical powers that only they possess, some great wisdom and superior skill inherent within their person, are going to change decades, if not centuries, of government "dysfunction" and incompetence and make everything perfect -- or at least what their idea of perfect is.

Here's the dirty little secret: most of the government is functional. It provides more services, does more stuff, than anyone can possibly conceive -- and, like plumbers, does it so well that we don't notice unless there's a problem somewehre. The problem is that governments are big institutions, and all big institutions possess a level of inherent dysfunction, or at least strategic incoherence, because you have literally thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands (like the NYC government) doing myriad things at once. It's impossible just to change of all that, easily, if at all. It's like trying to turn around an aircraft carrier -- but much, much harder.   

So good luck, Mr Adams. Assuming you're elected in November, we'll check in on how "functional" you've made the city in four years.