Politics & Power Quote by Tom Hayden

Hayden frames accountability as a local muscle, not a federal crutch. The first sentence sounds almost blandly procedural, but it’s loaded with challenge: New York’s officials already possess the facts, the authority, and the proximity to consequences. “They will have to live with what happens afterwards” isn’t a civics lesson; it’s an indictment of the way elected leaders try to outsource risk. He’s dragging decision-makers back into the blast radius of their own choices.

The sharpest move is the “worst scenario” pivot. Hayden doesn’t describe corruption or incompetence as the disaster; he names abdication. “Covering their eyes” suggests willful blindness, the kind that pretends neutrality while quietly choosing inaction. Turning it “over to the FBI” is presented as moral evasion dressed up as seriousness: let the feds handle it, let law enforcement convert a political problem into a criminal one, let an agency with its own history and incentives define the story.

That’s classic Hayden, the New Left organizer turned public servant, suspicious of surveillance states and allergic to performative toughness. The subtext is about democratic legitimacy: cities can’t keep calling in distant authorities whenever decisions get messy, not without hollowing out local governance. He’s also warning how quickly “law and order” can become a convenient alibi for leaders who don’t want to take heat from voters, unions, or donors. Accountability, in Hayden’s view, isn’t optional; it’s the whole job.