Whoever drove columnist Errol Louis of the New York Daily News over to Crank Street and left him there should double-back immediately and pick the dude up. He's taking root, and needs a lift back to the land of equilibrium.
Louis, an erudite voice at the News and a frequent cable talking head who generally leans to the left, took a gratuitous shot at one of the city's important voices in progressive policy and it's got me steamed.
Here's the background: Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a wonderful New York-based think tank whose middle name is "feisty" and whose DNA is progressive, is taking a leave of absence to serve as a policy guru in the reelection campaign of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Now, before you go on, know this: Andrea's a good friend of mine, and I serve on the DMI board. So sprinkle your grains of salt, uh, liberally on the rest of this post if you're of a mind.
In today's News, columnist Louis decided to imagine some motivation on Andrea's part - some reason that would make her push progressive policy in Bloomberg's campaign - see if you can pick it up:
Don't expect that to happen this year. Schlesinger, now within sniffing distance of the Bloomberg bonus pool, told the Daily News her new job will be creating "ideas and rationale for a bold and progressive third term for the mayor."
That may happen. Or Schlesinger could end up being humored until the election is over, after which an administration that scorned and ignored DMI policy suggestions for years simply will go back to business as usual.
Okay, I made that easy. Errol Louis thinks Andrea's in it for the Bloomberg fortune. He also labors under two other misconceptions: that DMI was essentially Freddy Ferrer's policy shop during his last campaign and that Andrea is too dense to realize she's simply being used as a liberal token by the Bloomberg campaign.
On the first: of course Freddy Ferrer (also a friend, and in my view, somebody who saw of a lot of our current troubles coming) was strongly in favor of the middle class policy orientation of DMI - it was Freddy who first rejuvenated DMI around those very issues a few years earlier. But DMI did not (and I was there) either actively support Ferrer nor oppose Bloomberg. Indeed, for a think tank, our record is remarkably transparent - we generally blog the whole thing.
Secondly, Andrea Batista Schlesinger is nobody's fool. In my personal experience, she can't be humored - at least not without significant risk to both body and psyche.
It amazes me that someone of Louis's caliber who toss such gratuitous mud, holding Andrea's to a higher moral bar than the campaign pros who have signed on to the Bloomberg campaign. Imagining sinister motivations of public figures is a columnist's lowest tactic.
Now, I'm not suggesting there isn't legitimate news here. Aiming for a third term after disposing with voter-enacted term limits, Mayor Bloomberg has angered a New Yorker or two. Most Democrats dislike, at some level, his former Republican registration and association with the 2004 GOP national convention. Others strongly favor one of the two leading Democratic challengers, William Thompson and Anthony Weiner. And I'm not immune to the idea that billionaires in the current economic climate make for convenient targets - nor, frankly, to the notion that we cede too much power and influence on our public commons to those who are successful at business.
But Andrea's choice to work on policy for the Bloomberg camp is not about money: hers or his. It's about her commitment to activist government and progressive policy in the lives of the millions of New Yorkers who don't own multiple homes or fly on private jets. She - and the DMI board - made a conscious and mature decision that a third Bloomberg term was likely, that the candidate was receptive to change, and that this was the time to push the kind of progressive policy on education, transportation, healthcare and other issues from the inside.
Differ with us on that choice, if you'd like. That's fair. But please leave wrong-headed, imagined, cheap-shot personal motivations out of it.
from Amazon.
