All the Best: Letters from a Feisty Mayor.

IN NOVEMBER 1975, the City of New York's seven and a half million people discovered that four decades of liberalism had driven their city into financial default. Budgetary gimmicks and phantom revenues had resulted in a budget with $12.8 billion in expenditures and only $10.9 billion in revenues. The politicians had managed to accumulate deficits that were Mr. Marlin is the editor of The Quotable Chesterton and The Quotable Fulton Sheen. He has co-authored with Joe Mysak The Bond Buyer's Guide to Municipal Bonds, to be published in December. aged to accumulate deficits that were masked with $4.5 billion of short-term borrowing.

New York during this crisis was labeled "fear city." People and corporations were fleeing; over 660,000 jobs were lost between 1969 and 1976. The South Bronx, a municipal desert, became the symbol of liberal hegemony.

To rescue the city, the bankers, politicians, and union leaders created the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) and the Emergency Financial Review Board. The incumbent mayor, Abe Beame, was stripped of his authority, and the $4.5 billion of short-term debt was converted into 25-year MAC bonds. These events did not curtail liberal spending habits. Tremendous deficits were still tolerated; $1.1 billion in 1976 and $1 billion in 1977. And as the mayoral elections approached, municipal default and bankruptcy once again loomed over the Big Apple.

The 1977 race for mayor was a mad scramble. Out of a heap that included Mario Cuomo and Bella Abzug emerged the congressman from the Silk Stocking District-Edward I. Koch. Elected on the slogan, "After eight years of charisma [John Lindsay] and four years of the Clubhouse [Abe Beame] why not try competence?" Ed Koch viewed himself as a liberal with sanity." Thanks to his gutsy approach to handling government finances and his receptiveness to Reaganomics, by 1981 the city was running in the black, and throughout the remainder of the decade it experienced an unprecedented economic boom.

All the Best: Letters from a Feisty Mayor is Koch's apologia of his 12 years as chief magistrate. These lively letters, supplemented with ample commentary, cover everything from feminism to camel racing, from Jesse Jackson to baseball. Conservative readers will disagree with several of Kochs positions, particularly his views on abortion and homosexuality. Nevertheless, they will mostly find themselves cheering on this consummate New Yorker, this man who evokes the best of Gentleman Jimmy Walker, Fiorello Laguardia, and the sidewalks of New York.

Koch is not afraid to demolish liberal icons, and he admits that he too has been guilty of political idolatry. He writes:

I have publicly stated and referred to myself as "Mayor Culpa" for having voted for programs in the Congress which added to the city spending. I neither knew nor cared at the time how those wonderful programs would be paid for and by whom. Indeed, I have summed up my responsibility by saying that if I had the power I would punish every member of Congress who participated in those days, and perhaps even today, with some of their mandates imposed on cities, by having them serve one year as mayor.

With style, substance, and a rhetorical axe, Koch smashes liberal pieties remorselessly. These letters could easily be the basis of a book entitled The Quotable Mayor. Some samples:

On welfare: ...able-bodied people who are on public assistance should be required to go back to work and lose their benefits if they refuse.... The American public will support relief. But they will not willingly support ripoff."

On the drug epidemic: . . . the stiffer the penalties against dealing and drug use, the less drug abuse there will be. If we're serious we may want to do what was done in Malaysia and Japan. In Malaysia they put drug dealers to death. And you don't see many drug dealers in Malaysia any more."

On Jesse Jackson: As a potential President of the United States, there is much to fear in Jesse Jackson. He is farther to the left than George McGovern and far to the left is not where the overwhelming majority of the American people want to go.... His flights of rhetorical fantasy may be impressive. His grasp of the factual record is not."

On leftist governments: "Regrettably liberals too often remain strangely silent about the excess of leftist governments. I think that is because leftist governments clothe themselves in such lofty language that their good intentions are taken as an article of faith, no matter how brutal or barbaric their actions may be." Reading these quotes, it is easy to understand why the liberal establishment came to despise Ed Koch. When political scandals surfaced in the offices of the Queens borough president and the Bronx Democratic Party leader, the liberal elites made every effort to destroy Koch by tagging the blame on him. In their rush to establish guilt by association, they missed the irony of the crimes: nearly all these offenses were committed by self-proclaimed liberal reformers. And these frauds condemned Koch for having dealings with their creations.

Granted, the mayor bargained with the liberal political bosses-but so did Mario Cuomo, Donald Trump, Jimmy Breslin, and the city-desk editors. Dealing with power brokers is an inherent part of the liberal-designed elitist system. Yet Ed Koch was singled out. Mario Cuomo wasn't condemned for seeking the support of Queens borough president Donald Manes. He wasn't shunned because his 1977 campaign manager, Mike Dowd, ran a corrupt collection agency. Jimmy Breslin wasn't run out of town because of his association with Queens Boulevard hacks. Donald Trump wasn't deserted because he dealt with Bronx boss Stanley Friedman to get tax abatements. Why Koch and not them? It is simply the result of liberal hypocrisy. To divert attention from their intellectual and moral bankruptcy they needed a scapegoat-so they chose Edward I. Koch.

The hypocrites prevented Koch's election to an unprecedented fourth term; they cannot prevent him from speaking out. This book, along with his newspaper column and radio and television shows, will upset New York liberals for years to come. El