Look up the word “pigheaded,” and you might just find its definition illustrated with Mike Bloomberg’s picture.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Sure, there is Mike the Nanny, with his single-minded eagerness to control minute details of the personal lives of everyday New Yorkers.
Smoking bans. Trans-fat bans. School bake-sale bans. Calorie-posting requirements. Diabetes databases.
When it comes to New Yorkers’ behavior, Mayor Mike wants one standard: his. (Except when it comes to him, of course: Among his own favorite snacks are hot dogs, cheeseburgers and burnt- bacon-and-peanut-butter sandwiches!)
Don’t expect this to change in a third Bloomberg term.
However, Bloomberg’s near-invincible self-confidence has led to some good things for the city, too.
He determined early on, for example, that Rudy Giuliani-era welfare reforms were worth preserving. Forcing people to take responsibility for their own situations didn’t earn Bloomberg plaudits from the city’s liberal elite — but it was, and remains, the right thing to do.
This year, Bloomberg also turned down extra federal stimulus food-stamp money that would have required the city to gut hard-won welfare reforms.
This outraged the hunger lobby — but, again, it was the right thing to do. As was his insistence that the city regain control of its multibillion-dollar aid-to-the-homeless policies, despite the enmity it has earned him among activists.
Finally, we hope Mike won’t pay much of a political price for two of the most controversial, yet essentially sound, policy initiatives of his mayoralty: His “congestion” taxes and abortive 2012 Olympic games bid were part and parcel of a large-scale effort to address New York’s deteriorating infrastructure, mass-transit woes and need for new energy sources.
The initiatives were torpedoed by political reality, but were also indicative of Bloomberg’s often acute, long-range vision, and his willingness to fight for it until the bitter end accrues to his credit.
Pigheaded? Sure. Wrong? No.