He’s got riches Rockefeller never dreamed of. He’s twice been elected by the people of New York. He even believed he had the right stuff to be president.
He’s the man who has it all, so why does Michael Bloomberg look so sour? And why does he risk his reputation with cheap campaign tricks against an outgunned opponent?
The polls say he is ahead, but Bloomberg is running scared. His obscene spending could hit $100 million and is increasingly devoted to negative ads, a sign he has lost confidence in his own record.
Most surprising, the mayor has stooped to distortion to shape his key attacks against Democratic comptroller Bill Thompson.
After weeks of pounding Thompson over the lagging investment returns of city pension funds, Bloomberg, a Republican, conceded last week that his representatives voted for the very investments he denounces.
Think of it — the man who’s supposed to be the sharpest blade in the toolbox blames Thompson for bad deals he endorsed. His concession undercuts the pension issue, which Bloomberg uses as a proxy to argue Thompson can’t be trusted with the buck, and casts a shadow on Bloomberg’s own judgment.
Bloomberg is also pulling a fast one on education. As Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute first noted, the mayor is rewriting history by claiming Thompson ran the schools a decade ago and was responsible for their failures.
While it’s true Thompson was president of the Board of Education, Bloomberg’s successful argument for mayoral control in 2001 was that nobody was in charge because board power was split among five borough presidents and the mayor. Mayoral control, he and others said, would end dysfunction by making one person accountable.
Yet Bloomberg, in his onslaught of ads and mailings, labels comparisons of his education tenure with Thompson’s “apples to apples.” It’s not, and he knows it.
The city economy, with an unemployment rate above 10 percent, and education are in a state of crisis. That’s why Bloomberg has singled them out, but instead of relying on his record, parts of which are truly impressive, his massive campaign machine is often stuck in attack mode. Beyond its distortions, the bullying tone is unbecoming for a billionaire incumbent.
Meanwhile, the house is burning down on Bloomberg’s watch.
With New York state facing a risk of insolvency, the next mayor must deal with a crisis greater than the one 30 years ago. Albany helped to bail out the city then. Now Albany needs its own bailout just months after the feds pumped in about $14 billion.
How the city can balance its own books and help employers create private jobs is what this election should be about.
Unfortunately for the mayor, the economic problems come just as the big education gains he touted are suspect. First, it was the revelation that state tests were dumbed down to where it’s amazing anybody managed to flunk.
Now comes word that national tests show the real level of achievement among state students, including those in the city, has been flat. So instead of 87 percent of fourth-grade students being proficient in math, only 40 percent are.
The test mess is exacerbated by teachers and principals getting nearly $40 million in bonuses on the basis of the phony results — a deal Bloomberg negotiated.
None of this is to suggest Thompson has earned the job. He talks about making the city more affordable without confronting that the only way to do that is to sharply reduce government spending.
The cost-of-living issues he grumbles about — soaring water rates, inflated parking tickets, crippling property taxes — can be traced back to the exorbitant cost of labor. Cut those costs, and the city won’t need to gouge citizens for every last dime.
On education, Thompson was always skeptical of Bloomberg’s claims, but he now shares the burden of laying out a plan for true progress. He hasn’t delivered one.
In only 16 days, New Yorkers pick their next mayor. Given the empty campaign so far, that’s a frightening thought.
Health care is ‘devil’s’ work
In our polarized nation, it’s often hard to make sense of competing ideas. Take health care.
The proposed overhaul would sweep aside much of the system we know and create a new one.
Would it be better or worse?
Ambrose Bierce has the answer. A Union officer in the Civil War and then a biting satirist, Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary,” published in 1911, reduces politics to the essence of human nature.
To Bierce, a conservative “is a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”
That says it all.
Washington weak as the world turns on America
The score last week was distressing. America got its butt kicked all over the globe.
The French said no more soldiers for Afghanistan.
The Brits will send only a measly 500.
Pakistan is exploding.
The UN Human Rights Council approved its outrageous report of the Gaza war, accusing Israel of war crimes.
The Russians, after jerking us around on sanctions against Iran, said nyet.
The Chinese didn’t bother to jerk us around, saying no without hesitation.
We have only ourselves to blame for much of this mess. President Obama is dithering on our commitment to Afghanistan, we didn’t try very hard to protect Israel’s right of self-defense at the UN, and our position on Iran remains maddeningly muddled.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton added to the confusion in an interview with ABC News. After saying, “We remain committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power,” she said sanctions would signal “a result of the diplomatic track failing. So we are committed to the diplomatic track.”
Clinton, who in last year’s campaign promised to “obliterate” Iran if it used nuclear weapons, now says she retains “a small space for doubt” that Iran is actually trying to get nukes. Incredible.
And Neville Chamberlain said Herr Hitler wanted peace.
O’s gov shove wrecks Rudy run, too
Rudy Giuliani is still sitting on the fence about a run for governor next year, but insiders are starting to believe he will not make the race. Doubts about whether he wants the job enough to campaign for it have deepened since President Obama made it clear he wants Gov. Paterson out. Giuliani rel ished the idea of running against Paterson but sees An drew Cuomo as very tough to beat.