Public officials have enormous advantages in reaching the voters to present themselves, their positions, and their achievements to the people. In the executive branch, they have ample communications staff, and a variety of matters on which to report. Legislators, who often want to be executives, have a somewhat harder time because there are so many of them, but they can be freer discussing or discovering issues. Senator Charles E. Schumer, a first-rate legislator, has completely mastered the art. He is a role model for Congressman Anthony Wiener and Assemblymembers Scott Stringer and Jeffrey Klein, among other aspirants for higher office. If this custom had a theme, it would be Always on Sunday.
 
On the other hand, there are disadvantages in being an incumbent public sector executive. For one thing, you can be held responsible for anything that goes wrong in the city, or does not go as well as people want. Second, there are basic contradictions between elements of the constituency, city employees want higher wages, property owners want lower taxes; most citizens want stricter policing and tougher law enforcement, except when they, their families, or friends are defendants; while the advocacy-legal aid-judiciary complex often seeks lower sentences and higher standards of proof.
 
Now, before you go wild at that reference, which is derived from President Eisenhower's description of the military-industrial complex in his farewell remarks in 1961, I do not mean to say that everyone in those fields has that attitude, but many wise and honorable people do, often blaming individual misconduct on the failings of society. They believe in the "root cause" theory, which redistributes blame for crime over most of the community, sometimes including even themselves, who labor for what they believe is social justice.
 
That theory was the basis of the Kerner report on the riots that erupted in American cities in the mid-1960's. President Johnson appointed a commission in 1967 to look into the civil disorders, in which scores of people were killed. Its chair, Otto Kerner, a Democrat, was Governor of Illinois; its vice chair was Mayor Lindsay of New York City, at the time a Republican. Judge Kerner was subsequently convicted and imprisoned for mail fraud, bribery, perjury, and income tax evasion, but no one looked into the root cause of his dishonesty.
 
The Mayor also bears the burden of individual misbehavior or errors in judgment by city employees, particularly if the case attracts wide attention. There are almost 40,000 police officers; if one of them in what he thinks is an emergency wrongly kills someone, it is the mayor who is ultimately held responsible, particularly if he handles the situation inappropriately. For example, in the tragic shooting of Timothy Stansbury on January 24, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly called the shooting "unjustified," which is what most of us who read newspapers believe. The door from the stairway to the roof opened quickly, the police officer, whether by accident or unfortunate reflex, fired one shot, and the innocent young man was killed.
 
The Stansbury tragedy was clearly not the "cold-blooded killing" described by City Councilmember Charles Barron, who plans to run for Mayor next year with the support of Al Sharpton. But it was certainly not proper police work; an officer should not shoot first unless the other person has a weapon and the officer’s life is endangered. Nonetheless, the reaction to Commissioner Kelly's description of the shooting as unjustified was a public demand for his resignation by Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. "That was the straw that broke the camel's back," the union leader said. You can find the story by Michael Wilson and Colin Moynihan in today's Times. The result of the tragedy could be alienation of both African Americans and police officers, although the Mayor expressed sympathy and regret, and spoke from the heart at the young man's funeral. His conduct in this matter has been exemplary.

(In the last half-century, there have been four mayors who were re-elected, Wagner*, Lindsay, Koch*, and Giuliani [*Prior to the adoption of term limits, Wagner and Koch each served three terms.] There were two one-term mayors, Dinkins and Beame, whose administrations were marked by fiscal crises which required massive layoffs of city employees.)

Over a four-year term, however, enough of these or other incidents will occur that the incumbent's base and support can be eroded, whether he has performed properly or not. We live with a political cycle in which people elect new leaders, and subsequently reject them, sometimes for valid reasons, sometimes out of pique at correct but unpopular decisions, sometimes out of simple desire for change, without much thought of the consequences.

Those of us in politics cannot complain unduly about the process. The relevant rule, 29-B, paraphrases Hyman Roth's observation, "This is the business we have chosen." So it is and so it will be.