Bloomberg and Moses

This past summer I read The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It's a biography of Robert Moses, who has pretty low name recognition relative to other important historical figures. But he is, by most accounts, the most important person in the shaping of New York City during the 20th century.

He was termed a "master builder," though he was basically a city planner, an architect, and an incredibly shrewd politician all rolled into one. To name every work he built would be impossible. He created nearly all of the highways and parkways throughout New York City, Long Island, and much of New York State. He created Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, Jones Beach, the United Nations building. He built nearly every bridge and tunnel throughout the five boroughs. Virtually created, from scratch, the State Parks of New York. He consistently had power over the mayor of New York City, the governor of NY State, and, on a few occasions, the POTUS. Between the late 1920s and the mid-1960s, he was basically the most powerful man in the most important city in the world. And he was never elected to public office.

This brings me to Bloomberg. One of Moses's great strengths was that he was a masterful bill writer, capable of inserting key clauses that he knew would either be overlooked or misinterpreted at the time of passing, only to ensure his own place atop the NY bureaucracy for years to come. It was (Godwin) very Hitleresque. Rail against the system as only benefitting the elites, call for reform, finally work your way to the top, and change the rules so you're dictator (or Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority) for life. This seems to be the crux of what Bloomberg is trying to do.

I like Bloomberg, he seems like a decent guy (though stumping for Bush in '04 is pretty damn awful). But what he's doing seems so underhanded. New York City's government still operates very machinelike; being an incumbent (and an incumbent who has major ins with not only the financial world, but the fickle NYC press) is pretty important, I would have to imagine. Slippery slope fallacy, yada yada, but who's to say when his third term is up, it's not time for another one? Granted, you can argue that if he was a bad mayor, the people would kick him out. But let's say he's just a mediocre mayor, and in a normal environment, new blood would be appropriate. How does anyone run against a Bloomberg machine that can flood the airwaves with ads and garner endorsements from every local media outlet?

I'd probably vote for him if I lived there, though.