Like Shakespeare's "Othello," Mayor Eric Adams can claim he did "the state some service, and they know'd it."

That service might include his living up to his pledge to make the city safer with a reduced number of shootings, increased housing, much cleaner streets, and promising to always serve his country. These accomplishments, however, for too many New Yorkers, are overshadowed by his failures -- the circle of corruption that proved too circumscribing or tempting to quell, his refusal to accept a welter of foreign and straw donations, and most disturbing of all, his acquiescing to the lure and insidious impulses of Donald Trump.

As the city's second elected Black mayor, he patterned himself after David Dinkins -- prophetically right down to being a one-term office holder. But as we often say, all comparisons are odious. Adams possessed his own set of tempestuousness, where on the one hand, we will cherish his civil rights commitments during a time when he was an officer, when he marched with us against the overwrought police behavior.

On the other hand, we were troubled by his inability to keep his own precious and well meaning counsel. On too many occasions, we found him succumbing and taking the bait of people who did not have the best intentions for him or his administration. Some of the charges against him fall on the scale of less than ignominious, and he was never convicted of any wrongdoing, though he could have made wiser decisions about choosing his associates and team members.

But that's water over the dam, and we know you can never step in the same river twice. So, what's to be done with this bedeviled public servant, and what is ahead for one who professed such visionary prospects?

Of course, we wish him well. Unlike Othello, he did not have a scheming Iago -- though some might argue there were worthy counterparts. There was no Desdemona, though elements of manipulation and deception were present; no Cassio, but a few loyal subordinates stood by him.

Adams' end is nowhere as tragic and fatal as Othello's, who took his own life, but we wonder how many times it took for him to finally step aside after repeatedly shooting himself in the foot.