Nanny Bloomberg Knows Best
Not only is former -- and possibly future -- presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg certain of what's good for you, he knows you lack the sense to choose it, declares Abe Greenwald.
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Some years back, the late William F. Buckley, Jr. and his late wife Pat were hosting a get-together in their Manhattan home. At one point, the formidable Mrs. Buckley approached New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, drew deeply from her lit cigarette and blew a copious plume of smoke in his face. “Mr. Mayor, may I smoke in my own house?” she asked.
Doubtless the Mayor is still pondering the question. Since he took office six years ago, Mike Bloomberg’s record is, among other things, a study in finicky prohibition. Not only is Bloomberg certain of what’s best for you, he knows you to lack the good sense to choose it. In order to ensure the well being of his charges, the Mayor has instituted a few laws about which he has said, “People will adjust very quickly and a lot of lives will be saved.” Has an American politician ever expressed a more vitally un-American sentiment? Dubious claims of life-saving aside, American citizens aren’t to be schoolmarmed into compulsory purification.
Yet, in 2002, brushing off a few cranky editorials, Mayor Mike instituted a smoking ban that covered every public New York City workplace including all restaurants, bars, cabarets, and pool halls. In 2007, he enacted the country’s first municipal ban on trans fats in restaurant food. With their appetites regulated and a chunk of their free choice under lock and key at Gracie Mansion, denizens of the vice-free five boroughs have been, presumably, “adjusting.”
Citizens of the larger United States, however, are not yet so lucky as to have their diets and recreational habits reviewed for state sanctioning. In a February 29 New York Times op-ed, Mayor Bloomberg made the heart-breaking (and presumably heart-clogging) announcement that he is not at this time seeking the office of president of the United States. But, he did offer this as consolation:
In the weeks and months ahead, I will continue to work to steer the national conversation away from partisanship and toward unity; away from ideology and toward common sense; away from sound bites and toward substance. And while I have always said I am not running for president, the race is too important to sit on the sidelines, and so I have changed my mind in one area. If a candidate takes an independent, nonpartisan approach — and embraces practical solutions that challenge party orthodoxy — I’ll join others in helping that candidate win the White House.
Setting aside Hizzoner’s logical non-sequitur — which posits caring about the election as contradicting his vow not to run — let’s break down his pledge to the country: No longer content to sit on the fence, he now vows to support the first candidate who ignores things like ideology and is willing to make nice. Not the weightiest proclamation, is it?
But it’s certainly a characteristic one for Mayor Mike. After all, Bloomberg’s micro-managerial approach to the lives of private citizens has a necessary flipside: the unfettered license of those who govern. I first picked up on this in 2002 when Bloomberg was challenged on the wisdom of his taking the controls of a New York City Police helicopter. The public servant’s response? “‘I fly helicopters more sophisticated than that all the time that I happen to own.” Bloomberg himself can’t be bothered with the constraints of party obligation. He operates instead with a sort of trans-partisan utility, adopting temporary labels as needed. Previously a Democrat, he avoided the certain dogfight of the 2001 Democratic primary by switching to the Republican Party. Fast-forward to 2005 when he was re-elected and you’ll find him dropping his GOP party membership.
So, for Mike Bloomberg “independence” is an entitlement that comes with leadership. Sadly, for his supporters it’s a soft-focus dream about how to move beyond all the political differences that plague our nation. How many times have I heard Bloomberg’s fans praise him as the only person who can move beyond the partisan rancor that has our polity locked in disagreement? The thing that Bloomberg and his fans miss is that disagreement is important, and the fetishization of unity is dangerous.
As evidence of the untenable (and undesirable) consequences that come with playing nice at all costs, look at Bloomberg’s own history on the most important issue facing the U.S. today: Iraq. When not deflecting the war question because it’s “not a local issue” the man who was considering the presidency has babbled on every side of the debate, depending on the nation’s feelings at that time. As the Advocate reports: in 2004, he came to Laura Bush’s defense at a joint press conference, telling the room of reporters: ”Don’t forget that the war started not very many blocks from here.” Before long, he was cutting his losses by “supporting the troops.” Additionally, when asked if the president lied about WMD Bloomberg said he had no idea. He’s since lambasted those who want to withdraw and also called for a “resolution” to the war — without proposing a thing. This isn’t unity; it’s complete dissolution. And it’s what Bloomberg is calling upon the candidates to endorse.
In meta-Bloomberg fashion his Times op-ed is wishy-washy about which presumptive frontrunner he finds satisfactorily wishy-washy. If Bloomberg is seeking the embodiment of his fantastical post-partisan unity dream then Barack Obama is his man. But if he’s looking for someone with a concrete record of crossing the aisle in order to get things done, then John McCain is the obvious choice. It well may be the case, however, that neither man fits the bill. Mike Bloomberg demands that people conform to his idiosyncratic standards. Using his personal health-and-well-being blueprint, the mayor has tried to remake New York. As neither Obama nor McCain are City residents, he’ll have a hard time getting them to comply with this latest directive.
Then again, if his sole criterion in picking a favorite is really the challenge they present to party orthodoxy, Mike Bloomberg needs to get out there right now and lend Ralph Nader one of his fancy helicopters. There’s a lot of time to be made up.
Abe Greenwald is the assistant online editor at Commentary.
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7 Comments
vb:It sounds like beef is next on nanny’s hitlist, and not just in burgers.
Mar 6, 2008 - 3:10 am Webutante:Don’t think Mr. Obama will be seen dining publicly in NYC and enjoying it, since I believe he chain smokes, though Michelle is riding herd on him to quit.
Mar 6, 2008 - 5:39 am MarkD:I expect he’d get about two percent of the vote if he ran a national campaign.
Mar 6, 2008 - 7:53 am Ace:I hate the smoking ban because now I encounter children in bars and worse than that, the parents who bring their children into bars.
Mar 6, 2008 - 8:02 am Rubicon:While my personal opinion counts for little to nothing in most circles, I offer this tidbit when it comes to Mayor Bloomberg.
Mar 6, 2008 - 8:04 am Paul from Florida:In New York’s boroughs, I think most ordinary folk would have written the man off as the neighborhood odd-ball dork, if he did not have his own money to throw around and make himself into self importance. W/o that money, he is just another ranting neighbor who most ignore & some deliberately agitate, just to see him go off the deep end! To bad the media, panderers that they are, lend him credibility only because he has bucks to use to push others around.
About little Mikey’s quip, “I fly helicopters more sophisticated than that all the time that I happen to own.”
Having spent most of my life in physical and military dangerous occupations, I’m well aware of life long symbol manipulatros hubris to physics, engineering, or human irrational will.
They are educated idiots. And, how would they know, anyways? They don’t do the work or take the literal fall. Most all of these males have never had a good, drag out of the bar parking lot beating (even if they were in the right). It’s good for soft hands, pampered urbanite Masters of the Universe. So too is an enlisted tour of the Marine Corps at sea sailing camp.
It’s been said, but Bloomberg and his type have to be educated into such stupidity. Anyways, like most politicians, Bloom will be gone and it will be as if he never was. Does anyone think in fifty years anyone will read anything he said or wrote? No, of course not.
Mar 6, 2008 - 8:06 am austin:Lets not forget that Bloomberg is being sued for his extra-legal out-of-jurisdiction gun straw buys in Virginia. And that his actions endangered over a dozen undercover operations.
Bloomberg is a loose cannon.
Mar 6, 2008 - 8:11 am