Rudy Giuliani wanted to call off the 2001 elections after the tragedy of 9/11, and wanted to be able to serve a third term.  Ultimately, his power grab was seen for what it was, and the election went forward.  Mike Bloomberg was elected.

For years, Mayor Bloomberg consistently rejected efforts to alter New York City's law (enacted and reaffirmed by voter referendum) that limits the Mayor and other City officials to two consecutive terms in office.  But this year, after toying with a run for President, Bloomberg's view on term limits changed.  For months and months -- well before the collapse of Wall Street -- he worked the story, teasing the public with his interest, getting editorial boards to agree to beg for him to stay on, and getting the working press to sit up and beg or scrap of information.

Now, in coordination with the Speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, he is pushing a move to override the expressed will of the people, and to alter term limits by legislative fiat.

I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...

Bloomberg actually has the gall to assert three things.  First, that his move to overturn term limits is motivated by the "financial crisis."  Second, that a City Council override of the will of the voters only "expands" voter choice (people can vote for whomever they want).  Third, that he, the person who helped cheerlead for the Wall Street titans who got us into this mess, is the only person to lead us out of the mess.

Asked yesterday by City Council Member Tony Avella why the Mayor did not simply appoint a Charter Revision Commission to consider and put to the voters any proposed changes to the law, "Anthony W. Crowell, counselor to the mayor, replied that no one could have foreseen the financial crisis" (NYT, 11/16/08. 2:54pm update).  Bloomberg himself is lobbying Council Members, pressing his case that "economic trouble requires 'continuity of government,'" and assuring the legislators that they needn't worry about accountability: "people do forget about things like this."

Assertion versus reality

Bloomberg's rationalizations are demonstrably false, and his record in office is very different from that which has been portrayed.  In the first instance, Bloomberg had been laying the groundwork for a third run for at least months before the financial crisis "hit" (there has, of course, been a continuing crisis for middle class families in New York, especially in terms of housing costs, but that reality does not jive with the triumphalist reporting on the Bloomberg regime).  The citing of recent events as a motivating factor for his desire to stay in office is quite transparently only a convenient way to get people to ignore his pre-crisis machinations.

What job does a Mayor actually perform?

Someone should tell Mayor Bloomberg that it is the federal government, not New York City, that has direct authority over the conduct of financial institutions.  Whether the Mayor is Bloomberg or Weiner or Thompson or Avella (one-time Mayoral candidate and champion flip-flopper Chris Quinn has now conceded by pulling out of the Mayoral race that she agrees that she would not be as good a Mayor as Bloomberg), none of them is empowered either to be Treasury Secretary, head of the SEC, or Chair of the Fed (and Mayor Bloomberg of course, never had the "insight" or interest to be motivated to blow the whistle on those in the financial industry who rapaciously lined their own pockets).  None has the power of Congress and the President to enact a national stimulus package.

What any of them -- or any other challenger -- would be charged with doing is running the City in straightened circumstances, trying to grow sectors of the City's economy other than Wall Street, allocating resources in a way that does not hurt poor and middle class New Yorkers, and acting as a pro-urban advocate with the state and federal government to increase the help the City gets for housing and other vital needs.

It helps enormously if the candidate has the vision to subordinate private interests to the greater public good; it is just as important (as we've learned through the bitter experience of President Bush) that a leader  have a healthy sense of his or her own limitations.

The tasks at hand, in other words, are tasks that many candidates in many elections have been judged on.  Perhaps the biographical item with least relevance to meeting today's challenges is the fact that, once upon a time, the incumbent earned a ton of money by building a financial services company.   

Expanding voter choice?

Yet another canard being put forward by Mayor Bloomberg and other supporters of changing the rules is that they are merely "giving the voters another choice."  That is, "people can vote for whomever they want."  If Bloomberg really believed that, he would be satisfied with the current system.  New York's term limit law does not cap elective government service at eight years, it caps years of consecutive service.  There is nothing in the current law that would prevent either Mayor Bloomberg (or any of the Council Members who are being term-limited out) from running for election in 2013.  At that time, the voters will be able to "vote for whomever they want."  Ah, but that wouldn't work ("that's different," in the infamous reasoning of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore).  Bloomberg and the others well know that they are not relying on "voter choice," but rather relying on the overwhelming power of incumbency.  The interest in maximizing voter choice is zero. 

May we discuss Bloomberg's record, or will he not respect us in the morning?

Over the last seven years, while the press has gone gaga over the Billionaire Mayor, his actual record has not been discussed very much.  In part, this is because many advocates have been seduced by the benefits of being in his good graces, and are aware that this Mayor (as well as the Council Speaker) are ready, willing, and able to punish those who do not toe the party line.

Even most of those who oppose changing term limits without a voter referendum tend to bow in the direction of giving praise to the Bloomberg mayoralty.

It is true that the issue directly at hand is one of democracy versus plutocracy and cronyism (the local headlines have featured which billionaires and "respected business leaders" 

But it is important to have the debate not be skewed by the false premise that the Bloomberg years have been glory years for New York.  Though his second term has featured some useful efforts to make an urban center work better (like making the City more pedestrian-friendly), his record is neither that of a "maverick," nor of an effective advocate for urban interests, nor or a friend of the middle-class:

(1) Bloomberg covered up City's financial condition in his first year in order to protect the re-election of Pataki, the worst governor possible for New York City;

(2) Bloomberg lost the commuter tax when he overreached and tried to get a tax decrease on the wealthiest New Yorkers;

(3) Bloomberg went along with property tax rebates, failing to collect the money for a rainy day;

(4) Bloomberg kept the City's economy over-dependent on Wall Street;

(5) Bloomberg diverted dollars and attention in an impetuous bid to get the Olympics;

(6) Bloomberg ignored a broad range of good government, business, and advocacy groups in pushing a stubborn desire to have a West Side stadium;

(7) Bloomberg subsidized  the Yankees to the tune of several hundred million dollars of public money;

(8) Bloomberg supported through legal means (his endorsement) and illegal means (the suppression of dissent) the most anti-urban President in modern history in 2004, when he (Mayor Bloomberg) was probably the individual who, if he had chosen a "country first" path, might well have had a key influence on outcome;

(9) Bloomberg has continued to give away City taxes in the service of various corporate "incentives," including incentives to what are now recognized as some of the most irresponsible players on Wall Street;

(10) Bloomberg opposed greater restrictions on tax exemptions for developers; and

(11) Bloomberg opposes rent regulation and mandatory exclusionary zoining, the things that would help New York's middle class.

Whatever, Michael Bloomberg may be to New York's wealthiest, he's no hero to the rest of us.

*   *   *

In the 20th Century, no President faced the level of challenge confronted by Franklin Roosevelt.  Yet this country, made sober in part by the reality that FDR never should have run for a fourth term, and chastened, too, by the dangers of permitting any individual to serve for too long, enacted a Constitutional Amendment to limit a President to serving two terms.

The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, has not served us poorly (would you have preferred a third Reagan term, perhaps?).  No great disaster will befall New York City if we continue with a similar system.  We are only put at risk by the outsized ambitions of Mayor Bloomberg and those who, like him, treat the citizenry as just one more public relations issue to manage.