View From The Middle

The big poll came out last week with all kinds of statistics that tell us the public is disillusioned with Mayor Bloomberg.

As published in last Friday’s Daily News, Quinnipiac University’s Polling Institute said that in February, just a month after he took office, Bloomberg’s approval was way up there at 65%. By the next month it went down slightly and, on the same trend, has now gone all the way down to 41%.

By all rights, the mayor’s popularity will probably continue to descend for awhile, at least until all the furor over raising taxes and cutting services sinks in and people get to know that a mayor just naturally becomes unpopular when he asks for more money from folks who don’t have more money.

The same problems confronted all the mayors from Jimmy Walker until now, of course. There was no Quinnipiac then, but public opinion could be heard loud enough in the ’20s, just as it did in earlier times when Boss Tweed threw money around and, frankly, didn’t give a damn what the public thought; it was his fellow politicians who counted.

Remember — not really too long ago (although it seems to be longer than it is, since so much has happened) — when Rudy Giuliani first got into office, he went riding around on the Bowery and appeared to be taking things out on the squeegee wielders. People didn’t understand that the squeegee guys were a symbol of quality of life problems that got the mayor’s ire up and his approval ratings plummeted at first. Think about how that rating climbed as he went through his years at City Hall.

Then there was that guy Ed Koch (one of my favorites!).

I’ve said it before, of course, but, from a purely New York "icon" standpoint, Koch has to rank right up there with Walker and LaGuardia. The guy just looked the part when he was mayor. After all, there is a sort of feeling of style that Koch had (still has, it seems), the same as those other two. Maybe it’s that chutzpah — better known as confidence — that he exudes.

To me, Koch always looks and acts like somebody’s uncle; someone you haven’t seen for awhile who comes to visit, brings the kids a toy, wears a funny hat and is maybe a little bit too flamboyant.

This uncle has an important job somewhere — you’re not quite sure what — it could have something to do with traveling, because you have a picture buried in an old pile of papers showing Uncle Ed on a trip in Egypt sitting on a camel in front of the Pyramids, wearing one of those sun-breaker sheets around his head and neck. If he doesn’t look like a ridiculous sheik out of a bad silent movie, then nothing does. Except Ed Koch was never silent about anything.

Outspoken as he still is, the former mayor was admitted to the hospital last Friday for a foot ailment he later said was probably gout. As he exited the hospital Sunday, TV cameras caught him and, when asked how he would handle the present budget problems in the city if he was still mayor, he answered, "Me? I’d go to the Bahamas!"

I don’t want to go into the politics of how well Koch did in office, relative to Bloomberg or even Giuliani. It’s that apples and oranges thing, really. They all had, and have, their style, after all. I mean, this is New York. We have always needed someone special to show the rest of the world that we mean what we say, that we — like Koch — have a sense of humor , and that we’re not afraid to be ourselves.

Traits like these belong to Koch and Giuliani.

As for Bloomberg...

He’s from Boston, isn’t he?