Question: How has New York City changed?

Tom Stewart: Social progress happens sort of the way teenagers’ acne clears up … slowly.  It takes so much than you ever think it’s going to.  Or the way a warm front, you know … rain stops.  It sort of gradually tapers off.  And when you think about that in this city …  New York City, when I first came here in1970, was a city that was pessimistic and it seemed to be getting worse.  And that now is this amazing city and the safest big city in America, and just so exciting, and was able to sustain, you know, the horrific shock of …  You couldn’t … I mean, you couldn’t have imagined a September 11, 2001 happening 20 years before.  It would have been just the … the final metaphor of the collapse.  Instead it was the final proof of the revival.  So I think recognition of these things take time, and that the solutions need to … sort of a rebirth of pragmatism.  Let’s get the best that we can and then get a little better, and then get a little better, and get a little better and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Recorded on: 6/22/07