Gov. Hochul publicly humiliated by Biden administration over migrants
Once upon a time, Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett airfield was an important military base — and New York governors were adults.
Times change.
The 1,300-acre-plus airfield — hugely important to US naval aviation in its day, but now mostly empty federal parkland — apparently caught Gov. Kathy Hochul’s eye as a possible site for a migrant location.
Indeed, let’s imagine that somebody woke up the other day and said: “Hey, the feds’ border breakdown caused our problem; let’s ask them if we can put up tents at Floyd Bennett to solve it.”
“Nifty idea,” imaginary Krazy Kat said. “Call Washington, and meanwhile work up a press release announcing how clever we are.”
Didn’t work.
Washington said no (there were some “legal issues,” the feds said) and the press release, which was real enough, went into the trash.
This was a plus for truth-in-advertising, because Krazy Kat ain’t that clever.
But she is a lawyer, which is surprising because — as we’ve all learned from “Law & Order” — lawyers never ask a question if they don’t already know the answer.
Answers? Hochul scarcely knows the questions: Not on migrants, not on crime, not on budget discipline; not on weed legalization — you name it, KK’s in the dark.
New York has always had problems — but until recently it had governors who were up to their challenges. Four became president, after all, and any number might have.
Whether the presidency is a proper standard these days is a fair question, given the last couple of incumbents. But that doesn’t let Hochul off the hook.
Yes, she was an accident — a non-threatening underachiever plucked from Buffalo to be Andrew Cuomo’s second lieutenant governor.
Yes, any responsible chief executive would have difficulty with New York politics given the state’s socially corrosive “progressive” environment.
And yes, New York City’s maddening mixed-message mayor — wagging his finger about migrants one minute, burbling sanctuary-city pieties the next — would drive any governor nuts.
But Kathy Hochul won the job outright last November — and now she needs to do it.
New York, constitutionally, is a strong-governor state; the powers of the office are formidable. But for that to work, the governor must be, well, strong — and Hochul is not
- She has let the Legislature walk all over her, especially on crime and the budget.
- She has failed to use her institutional powers to focus Mayor Adams’ attention on migrant solutions.
- And she has shown no appetite for enlisting two of the most powerful Democrats in Washington — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of Brooklyn) — to the state’s cause.
Hell, Hochul can’t even get her own government to coherently request permission to put up a few tents on an empty, weed-clogged old Navy base by the BQE.
But she was ready with a press release, just in case.
This is embarrassing, but it tells you all you need to know about the 57th governor of New York — dwarfed, as she is, by so many of her predecessors.
Email: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc
