Good riddance to NYC’s worst mayor ever – Bill de Blasio: Goodwin

In his novel “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoy writes that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Something similar can be said about New York City mayors: Successful ones share policies and leadership traits, while the failed ones chart individual paths of doom.

Over the last five decades, Gotham has experienced both. The successful mayors — Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg — stand tall because they took office in times of crises and turned New York’s fortunes around. They had their warts, but each left the city better off than when he started.

Something the late Sen. Pat Moynihan said of Koch could be said of Giuliani and Bloomberg, too. “He gave the city back its spirit,” Moynihan told me.

It was a key insight that illustrates the fact that while policies matter, the best policy without an infusion of indomitable optimism and determination will come to little. A zeal to succeed can also overcome policy mistakes.

Conversely, two of the three failed mayors — Abraham Beame and David Dinkins — had their spirits crushed by the problems they faced. Beame, during his time as comptroller, helped to create the fiscal crisis that swamped his mayoralty, and Dinkins was largely paralyzed as violent crime and disorder soared on his watch.

They were decent men, but lacked the right stuff to master the chaos they faced. As a result, the city was worse off when they left than when they began.

All of which brings us to Bill de Blasio. He is a failure, too, but on such a large scale that he belongs in a category of one. Mayor Putz, also known as the Worst Mayor Ever, is unique in all the wrong ways.

He inherited a remarkably safe and thriving city, the culmination of a 20-year-stretch where first Giuliani and then Bloomberg pushed crime to historic lows and ushered in a Golden Age of prosperity.

Instead of following the obvious path forward, de Blasio decided to break what his predecessors had fixed. He leaves a city in such dramatic decline that many people wonder if it can be saved.

De Blasio’s determination to be a wrecking ball was apparent at his inauguration.

The ceremony was laced with insults aimed at the city’s advances and Bloomberg, seated in the front row, was treated like a dog treats a fire hydrant. Harry ­Belafonte called the city’s justice system “Dickensian” without acknowledging that incarceration rates plummeted by 36% under Bloomberg as crime also ­plummeted.

Later, Sanitation Department Chaplain Fred ­Lucas Jr. called the city a “plantation,” an outrageous slur magnified by de Blasio’s comment that he had no problem with the inflammatory remarks.

Alas, it…