Zohran Mamdani Missed New York’s Turnaround — So He Learned Nothing from It

I have been living in New York City since the summer of 1977. I missed that year’s blackout, but I was here for the arrest of Son of Sam. I also saw Edward Koch’s first victory in a mayoral election. The one-time liberal Democrat-moving-right seemed like a breath of common sense, with a dash of sass. The city’s finances stabilized with outside control and a big federal loan. Ear buds muted boom boxes, poop-scoop laws turned dog latrines back into sidewalks again. Things seemed like they were looking up.

It was not so. Koch talked a good game, but he never got a handle on crime. People who get their history from movies look back to Taxi Driver to capture the bad old days, but I look to two movies set in the subways, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Warriors.

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Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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Zohran Mamdani

I have been living in New York City since the summer of 1977. I missed that year’s blackout, but I was here for the arrest of Son of Sam. I also saw Edward Koch’s first victory in a mayoral election. The one-time liberal Democrat-moving-right seemed like a breath of common sense, with a dash of sass. The city’s finances stabilized with outside control and a big federal loan. Ear buds muted boom boxes, poop-scoop laws turned dog latrines back into sidewalks again. Things seemed like they were looking up.

It was not so. Koch talked a good game, but he never got a handle on crime. People who get their history from movies look back to Taxi Driver to capture the bad old days, but I look to two movies set in the subways, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Warriors.