“How am I doin’?” Ed Koch, R.I.P.

Edward I. Koch, mayor of New York City from from 1978 to 1990, and a self-designated “liberal with sanity,” a Democrat who supported Ronald Reagan, has passed away at age 88. During the first of his three terms, he was an exceptionally effective leader, successfully saving the city from the extreme fiscal and other disarray that had virtually sunk it in the mid-’70s, actively defending his program and winning over his critics.

In the early ’90s, I was the guest of a guest at an elegant private dinner at Koch’s apartment on Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Koch said he didn’t like multiculturalism, and I argued—without success—that if we wanted to stop multiculturalism, we needed to restrict Third-World immigration.

His image as a liberal with sanity became increasingly frayed in my mind after he left office, for example, in his all-out support for homosexual “marriage.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 01, 2013 09:18 AM | Send