Bungled storm responses have taken down mayors and dented presidencies. Getting it right is much harder.
As Sen. Ted Cruz endured the torments of public scorn on Thursday—outed by fellow passengers on his way to a warm Cancún vacation, as millions of fellow Texans suffered from freezing temperatures and a catastrophic electricity failure—I had a sudden uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach: There but for the grace of God go I. Or at least someone I used to work for. It was Sunday, February 9, 1969, and New York Mayor John Lindsay was in the middle of a tough fight for re-election. I was working as his speechwriter at the time. The Yale-educated mayor from the tony East Side had his share of political baggage already, with many Brooklyn and Queens voters convinced he was too “Manhattan-centric.” That day had a typically bleak midwinter forecast, a mix of rain and slush. Instead, New York got hammered with what became known as the Blizzard of 1969. Fifteen inches of snow pounded the city, falling with particular force in East Queens. A combination of factors—light work crews on a Sunday, budget cutbacks, snowdrifts high enough to block the plows—left neighborhoods trapped for days. Lindsay was savvy enough to head out to Queens in person, but unlike the heroic reception he got a year earlier, when he walked the streets of Harlem after the death of Martin Luther King, he was greeted with many colorful suggestions about where he might go and what anatomical feats he might consider. Thanks in part to the slow response to the snow, Lindsay lost the Republican primary—and although he managed to win one more term running as an independent, his political reputation never quite recovered. “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” said Mark Twain. Voters, though, won’t excuse politicians who throw their hands up—or, worse, turn tail when disaster strikes. Weather might be the least controllable force a politician faces, but it comes with a severe price for mishandling its consequences. And it’s not clear that Cruz, despite a quick return home, will be able to dig himself out. Chicago Mayor Mike Bilandic fared even worse than Lindsay a decade later.
