BEREFT OF HITS, REPRISING GOLDEN OLDIES

WHEN all else fails, when you sense the audience starting to drift
toward the exits, go with whatever worked for you before. Stand-up
comics know this. So do cabaret singers. Also newspaper columnists,
while we're at it.

And mayors, too.

It has felt like Oldtimers Week at City Hall, with Rudolph W.
Giuliani dipping into the past to bring back the people and themes
that made him famous.

We're going to have a "quality of life" crackdown, Mr. Giuliani
announced. Does that sound familiar? How about his targets? They
included squeegee men, jaywalkers, panhandlers, homeless people and,
for good measure, sidewalk pot-smokers. (Seems Mr. Giuliani smelled
marijuana on a Midtown street on Monday, and immediately added dopers
to his hit list.)

No doubt, squeegee men can be terribly annoying. Not owning a car, we
happen to have never seen one. But we are prepared to believe that
platoons of them are out there making life miserable for suburbanites
who insist on driving into Manhattan.

The most striking aspect of the mayor's announcement, however, was
its Golden Oldies flavor. It brought back fond memories of "I'm Henry
VIII, I Am" by Herman's Hermits. "Second verse, same as the first,"
the song went. You could say the same of the Giuliani administration.

This latest crackdown was a reminder that Mr. Giuliani has presided
over a virtually agenda-free second term. His tendency has been to
stick with policies that served him well in his first four years,
which basically involve throwing the police at any problem that may
arise.

Not that most New Yorkers are likely to object to the new
crusade--unless perhaps they themselves get ticketed for jaywalking,
regarded by many here as an inalienable right. Even so, all this
underlines the absence of grand initiatives--dare we say
vision?--coming from City Hall these days.

For the first couple of years after his re-election in 1997, the
mayor focused almost exclusively on issues that he hoped would serve
him well in his search for higher office, a quest forced upon him by
term limits. He spent a lot of time, for example, talking up school
vouchers. This is an innovation that he once strongly opposed. It is
something that also seems unlikely to get much of a foothold in New
York City. But it became for him an appealing issue to bring before
conservative voters in a statewide campaign.

THEN, as everyone knows, his Senate race fell apart in early spring
under the twin blows of prostate cancer and a failed marriage. Since
then, what you mostly hear from City Hall has been, speaking of
Golden Oldies, the sounds of silence.

Only the most Rudy-phobic New Yorkers would begrudge the mayor time
off to deal with his illness and messy personal life. Still, the fact
remains that a very long time has passed without significant new
ideas pouring out of City Hall. One of the few of note was a proposal
in June to provide health insurance to some 1.5 million New Yorkers
who cannot afford it. (And it was only the mayor's bout with cancer
that made him sensitive to the problem in the first place.)

A check of the city's Web site gives some sense of present priorities.

It lists a total of 249 news releases from the mayor's office since
April 27, when Mr. Giuliani stunned New York with word of his
prostate condition. Most of the releases contain about as much
substance as cotton candy, dealing with an assortment of City Hall
ceremonies, bills to rename streets and friendly bets on baseball
games with the mayors of other cities.

Admittedly, news releases are an imperfect gauge of any official's
activity. But had there been tons of important developments to
announce, you can be sure they would have been posted on the Web site.

On the contrary, with this administration the second verse has pretty
much been the same as the first: quality-of-life offensives, one plan
after another for new stadiums and parades for conquering sports
heroes.

There is even a familiar ring to a promise by the mayor to reach out
to New Yorkers who feel alienated from City Hall--blacks and Latinos
for the most part.

He made such a pledge the night of his re-election, but then failed
to act on it. After withdrawing from the Senate race in May, he made
the same point, committing himself to finding a way "to break down
the barriers that I've created."

Thus far, there is scant public evidence that he has reached out to
many blacks and Latinos other than maybe the Yankees' Bernie Williams
and Jorge Posada.