The Success and Mistake of Bloomberg

Michael Rubens Bloomberg –born in Boston on February 14,1942 to a Jewish family-- is an entrepreneur who elected mayor of New York City just after the 9/11 terrorist attack. He was facing myriad of challenges unlike any mayors in US history, and he proved to be successful in governing the city and restoring it from the severe destruction.

During his eight years of twelve years tenure, he kept the city safe with the record low crime (then touted as the safest big city in America), managed budgets through fiscal crises, generated jobs, built infrastructure, improved public health, etc.

However, his remarkable success was tainted by his ambition to run the third term of mayoralty despite it’s out of rule.

He forced a change in the city charter –which limit the mayoralty term to max two consecutive terms-- to allow him to serve a third term. Despite elected for the third term, his performance declined.

A pool conducted to get performance rating from the New York City voters resulted 51 percent majority disapprove of his performance against 39 percent approve, his lowest rating since 2002 when he started the first term in office. Note: In February 2002 his approval rating was 65 percent.

This biography is written by Chris McNickle, a lifelong New Yorker who earned a PhD in US history from the University of Chicago and a BA in economics and international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

The author wrote the story in detail, through a lot of interview sessions from competent sources as well as abundant documents as references. It seems that he tried to control the tone by being as objective as possible.

In Chapter 10 of this book, McNickle gave the title “Third-Term Disasters and Triumphs” as lesson-learned, before he closed the book in Chapter 11 to describe Bloomberg’s legacy.

Power is indeed too sexy to ignore, that’s why leader who already had two terms would ask once more again, as Kissinger once said, “Power is the great aphrodisiac”.

***

Serpong, 5 Jul 2022

Titus J.

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