Mr. Trump and the Art of the New York Insult
By CLYDE HABERMAN JULY 6, 2017
As obnoxious as President Trump’s recent tweets have been for many Americans, his indifference to decorum is familiar to his hometown. This isn’t to suggest that the people of New York City have some special tolerance for Mr. Trump. Hardly. They voted for Hillary Clinton over him by four to one. He was even booed on Election Day outside his Manhattan polling station.
All the same, the New York-ness of the president’s behavior is striking. New Yorkers have a history of rewarding politicians who approach governance much the way Don Rickles constructed his comedy routine: as rule by insult. As Mr. Trump well knows, two of his city’s most successful political figures were mayors who shared little except a penchant for unfettered attacks: Edward Koch and Rudolph Giuliani. Anthony Weiner, cut from similar cloth, might have remained on a path to City Hall had he not self-destructed in his sexting scandal. Bluntness in New York can be a political virtue, at least among people and groups relieved not to be the targets of slice-and-dice rants.
Mr. Koch left little doubt that if he were ever afflicted with amnesia, he would forget everything except the grudge. He bragged in a 1980s memoir about how he made opponents cry or quake or sweat or twitch. He dismissed President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, as “a wacko.” He reviled suburbia as “wasting your life” — just before he courted suburban voters in an unsuccessful 1982 race for governor. One of his observations may have lodged in the Trump id: “You punch me, I punch back.” The president took that to a literal extreme in a tweet that showed him wrestling a man with the CNN logo on his face.
If Mr. Koch pummeled people with a frown or sometimes a self-satisfied smile, Mr. Giuliani did so with a snarl. On his weekly radio call-in show, Mr. Giuliani said a man unhappy with a city ban on pet ferrets was “deranged.” He mocked a disabled man who got under his skin as “a seriously disturbed guy.” He belittled a schools chancellor as “precious” and “whining.” He besmirched a man wrongly killed by the police in a botched drug operation as not “an altar boy.” In fact, the victim had been an altar boy.
Both mayors were rewarded with re-election — Mr. Koch twice, Mr. Giuliani once — by voters who saw them as fighters, willing to stand up for what they believed, even if they could be harsh. It is perhaps not surprising that another New Yorker, Mr. Trump, suspects that supporters will similarly have his back no matter how coarse he becomes.
But unlike the president (and, for that matter, Mr. Giuliani), Mr. Koch was at least able to laugh at himself on occasion. One of his slogans was: “If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.” By contrast, Mr. Trump would probably say that in agreeing with him 12 out of 12 times, you’re making America great again.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/opinion/trump-rudy-giuliani-ed-koch.html
