Just for the record, while I end up voting to re-elect Mayor Bloomberg if he ends up on the ballot next fall – depending on the alternatives, and in all likelihood there won’t be many good ones – I think it’s a bad idea to repeal the city’s two-term limit for mayors. Those limits are in place for a reason: anyone who remembers Ed Koch’s third term can tell you that the diminishing returns in terms of both quality and integrity on a Mayor’s subordinates accelerates pretty rapidly by the time you get into a 9th year in office. By and large, Bloomberg’s done a solid job trying to consolidate the gains made by Mayor Giuliani (h/t) and make incremental reforms, albeit with his own share of drawbacks, but really 8 years of almost anybody is enough.
PS, you really do have to read that Tomasky piece on Rudy, one that such a liberal journalist would never have written if he’d been the GOP nominee in 2008:
There’s one way of measuring a politician’s success. The things he did in his day that were controversial – are they accepted wisdom now? One can’t say “yes” to that question about everything Rudy did, by a long shot. But as far as that first year is concerned, this is true: No person could run for mayor and be taken seriously by saying or suggesting that he or she would depart radically from the basic path Giuliani set in 1994-95. Bring in more accountability, apply a new and needed standard of civic behavior, be forceful but fair with the unions, get the cops out on the street, prove that things that were broken could be fixed. It couldn’t be done. The local Democratic Party, which I scolded eleven years ago in the pages of this magazine…for its tectonic adaptation to the new rules, has learned this lesson too slowly. Or has it even learned it yet?
I concur. I voted for him twice and I think he has done a good job, but its time for someone new. We voted for this twice and lets remember that he only got into office because Guiliani was term limited. This is an issue of fairness.
Eight years of the socialist illuminati would be enough. People keep talking about the passed eight years, and they’ll want them back if the liberals get in.