To be fair, Ralphie was scum. And had his homosexual tendencies been made public, a war with NY would've come a lot sooner. Tony was a good boss in the beginning, insulating himself from the law, and making Junior the front boss (though Junior didn't know it). He handled the civil war between he and Junior well. But it pretty much all started to crumble from there. His first mistake was whacking the wrong guy when he ordered for Jimmy Altieri to be clipped. He had suspicion that Pussy was the rat all along, but due to his undying friendship, he didn't want to make a move until he got some god given sign or some shit. A good boss would've listened to the cop on the payroll the first time he mentioned Pussy being a rat. He got comfortable after killing Jimmy, Pussy just continued to feed information to the feds.

He killed Ritchie Aprile. Ritchie came home, and all his complaints were valid, to me anyway, he just wanted what he was entitled to, but with Jackie dying, everything fell under Tony & Juniors control, and Junior just being a front, Tony was too greedy to give Ritchie what belonged to him. On the other hand, Ritchie was too smart for his own good. But still..

He always made his most trusted guys feel like they were lesser people than him. Bobby, Chris, even Furio. Furio could've killed Tony, but he didn't, he was too loyal, he was one of Tony's best enforcers, you suspect the guy has feelings for your wife, which Furio never acted on, you make an example of him. Not run him off back to Italy, or whatever they did to him.

Killing his own cousin. He basically did too much to try to appease to NY. Which in all actuality proved to be his downfall. I mean, I'm sure there were other NY families other than the Lupertazzi's. Like Butch said, you cut the head off the snake and do business with whatever's left. But not Tony, he bent over backwards for NY.

Basically, I don't think he could ever handle the power.