Hertzberg on Bloomberg

Hendrik Hertzeberg's column on Bloomberg's third term is exceptionally good. Hertzberg is a master of the form --

In broad outline, New Yorkers know all this. We know that we’re bought and paid for. We know that there is something unseemly, even humiliating, about submitting ourselves to be ruled by the richest man in town. We know that the muscling aside of term limits, whatever the law’s merits, was a travesty. We know that the Mayor’s campaign this time has been puzzlingly, pettily negative. Yet we will, most of us, troop to the polls on Tuesday and pull the lever for Mayor Mike. The truth is that Michael Bloomberg has been a very good mayor. The record is mixed, of course, but the mixture is largely positive....

The Mayor has ruled us well, but he has infantilized us. We are a little too much like the passive Romans of Crassus’ day, when the institutions of the old republic were giving way to a despotic (and competent) imperium. “People got used to the idea of them,” Edith Hamilton wrote of Crassus and his fellow-triumvirs, Pompey and Caesar, “and when four years later their powerful organization was completed and they began to act openly, honored and honorable patriots could find excellent reasons for acquiescing in their running the city. Indeed, it seemed exceedingly probable that if they did not do so there would be nobody to run it.” If Bloomberg had been satisfied with two terms, he would be leaving office a beloved legend, a municipal god. He’ll get his third, but we’ll give it to him sullenly, knowing that while it probably won’t measure up to his first two—times are hard, huge budget gaps are at hand—it’ll probably be good enough. The Pax Bloombergiana will endure a while longer. But then what? Will we have forgotten how to govern ourselves?

The Greek Tragedy point is well taken. A lot of New York politics has those undertones -- there's hubris and justice; the king and the polis; the chorus and the audience. But it's the New Yorkers themselves who in this election are facing the tragic dilemma: they want a new Major, yet it's Bloomberg who's the best man for the job.