Lindsay and Beame were indeed catastrophes but remember whom Lindsay defeated for his first term — Beame! Proccacino might have been an improvement over Lindsay but he would not have been a successful mayor. Beame won by an incredible 40 points in the 1973 general election. Koch was almost as bad as Lindsay and Beame; the one thing he did accomplish was to get people to clean up after their dogs. By the time Dinkins took over, crime rates were at the highest rates in history; Dinkins actually started the reversal by getting the city council to raise taxes to hire six thousand new NYPD officers. He also hired Ray Kelly as NYPD Commissioner. Dinkins does not belong in the same sentence as Lindsay and Beame.
NYC has often had poor leadership, and poor choices. 🙁 One could also list a lot of Tammany Hall hacks who served as Mayor. 🙁 🙁