Gift, As In “White Elephant”

If you only read the teaser blurb at the bottom of the front page* — “In ‘NYC’ Clyde Haberman looks at Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign to extend term limits and how it could be considered the mayor’s gift to the people of New York — the gift of himself” — you would miss the point of Clyde Haberman’s column:

These are obviously tough times. The stock market is cratering. Local tax revenues are sure to plunge more sharply than a major league sinkerball. In this toxic atmosphere, the multibillionaire businessman turned $1-a-year politician has in essence announced loftily to his fellow citizens: “I make a gift of myself to New York to lessen its misfortune.”

It is a present that many in the city would happily accept. The mayor remains remarkably popular after nearly seven years in office. At this stage of the game, government leaders tend to be about as well liked as oil company executives (see: Bush, George W.). Mr. Bloomberg defies the normal pattern. Recent polls suggest that most New Yorkers would be glad to have him stay at the helm through a financial crisis that is likely to be with us for a while.

But there’s this pesky thing standing in the way. It is called the expressed will of the people.

Twice in the 1990s, New York voters approved referendums limiting the mayor and other officeholders to two terms. There is no reason that Mr. Bloomberg could not have gone back to the voters to ask if they’d had a change of heart and would bend the system to give him a third term.

Instead, with the support of fellow billionaires and an amen chorus of newspaper editorials, he worked behind the scenes to have the City Council change the rules all on its own. It would also mean that three dozen council members scheduled to leave office at the end of next year would get a chance to stick around for an extra term. Ditto for the public advocate, the city comptroller and the five borough presidents. It is quite inclusive, the Incumbency Protection Act of 2008.

*And now that Haberman’s column is buried on A27, it certainly makes it easy for an editor to de-sarcasticate a column with a slim blurb.