Joe Lhota’s acceptance of his new post at the NYU Langone Medical Center proves that he was never the right choice to be Mayor of NYC or even the GOP candidate

Takes spot as an under-boss at hospital and med school replacing man who left to be DeBlasio’s deputy

Meanwhile, DeBlasio showed what he is all about with his responses to the first snow of his regime

On Friday, the most recent Republican candidate for mayor, Joseph Lhota, was appointed senior vice president, vice dean and chief of staff of NYU Langone Medical Center (See “Former GOP Mayoral Candidate Joe Lhota To Join NYU Langone Medical Center” by Annie Karni, 1/3/14, Daily News/ Daily Politics [http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2014/01/former-gop-mayoral-candidate-joe-lhota-to-join-nyu-langone-medical-center]).

It isn’t that being Senior Vice President, Vice Dean and Chief of Staff of the NYU Langone Medical Center is an insignificant or unworthy position  –  quite to the contrary, it is a very substantial and significant position in one of the keystone institutions in New York City.  It isn’t that his new job is in any way a step down from the positions that Joe Lhota had previously held  –  no, it fits quite nicely into his already very impressive resume.  It isn’t that Joseph Lhota will be out of sight, out of the way or even out of the local spotlight  –  I suspect that, as “an advisor on issues of management and policy related to the strategic direction of the organization” and “liaison with government and elected officials” while Obamacare begins to take effect on institutions like NYU Langone Medical Center, Joseph Lhota will be tasked with being a front man in asserting the medical center’s and med school’s concerns, interests and positions vis a vis the implementation of that law and its related regulations going forward. The point is that Joe Lhota will once again be serving at the behest and pleasure of another Chief Executive  –  this time, the NYU Langone Medical Center Dean and CEO Robert Grossman.

This is the way Dean Grossman put it himself:  “Reporting directly to me, Joe will assist in managing all activities associated with directing a complex academic medical center....”  In other words, to the extent that Lhota will be a boss at all, it will be as an underboss.  It’s interesting that the guy Lhota replaced at NYU- Langone, Anthony Shorris, went off to take a job that Joe Lhota had held years before under Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Anybody who argued that Joseph Lhota’s experience and resume demonstrated that he could be Mayor of New York from day one ignored the real requirement of the job, the ability to lead and have others follow. The fact that he squeaked by in the Republican mayoral primary – losing Staten Island and almost losing Brooklyn  –  showed that for the most part, even Republican voters don't choose heads of government based on impressive resumes.

On the other hand Bill DeBlasio, the man who did get the job largely with an every man pitch, showed how he would do the job within the first couple of days after assuming the office. When it snowed, he went out with his shovel; and when it came to his first big decision, whether to let the schools open in the snow or not, he listened to the opinion of the nearest person effected by the decision, his son  Dante.