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The big blackout pulls New Yorkers together
By Bill Schneider
(CNN) -- How people respond to adversity can be a political statement. Either they trust the system and believe things are under control. Or they don't. By that standard, New Yorkers made a political statement this week. In fact, it was the political Play of the Week. New Yorkers have two models of how to respond to a power blackout. One was the Great Blackout of 1965. The response was calm, resilient, even cheerful. The crime rate was lower than normal. The other was the 1977 blackout, when 3,700 people were arrested for looting and arson. Here's one reason for the difference. Around the time of the 1965 blackout, two thirds of Americans still trusted government to do the right thing. By the late 1970s -- after a decade of Vietnam, Watergate and economic turmoil -- the civic culture had frayed. Fewer than 30 percent trusted government. Things seemed out of control. Which model did New Yorkers follow in the blackout of 2003? "A very quiet city," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday night. "There are no fires of any size going on at the moment. There is no criminal activity of any size taking place." The citizens coped. They climbed out of subways. They waited patiently to be rescued. "They yanked me out from the elevator," said one New Yorker. "And if they are watching, I would like to thank them." They walked down the stairs. They walked down the streets. They walked across the bridges. And if they couldn't make it home, they slept on the street. Has the civic culture been restored? Well, trust in government is up a little over where it was in the 1970s. Public confidence went up after September 11, 2001, mostly because people needed government to protect them -- particularly in New York. Then the people of New York put their trust in government. And it worked. This time, their calm response made a political statement: we have trust. It was the political Play of the Week. Other cities, like Detroit and Cleveland, made the same statement. California has had power blackouts, too. But the result was a very different statement. Political trust collapsed, and the people are after the governor's head. Californians point to a failure of leadership, unlike New York after 9/11.
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