Mike Lupica: Mayor Bloomberg, intoxicated by power, rides coattails of NYC’s iconic greatness

There’s a great piece by Mike Lupica in today’s NY Daily News, “Mayor Bloomberg, intoxicated by power, rides coattails of NYC’s iconic greatness.”

Why do the sports writers cover politics so well?

From the article:

Michael Bloomberg said this week that he doesn’t want to be President of the United States, really he doesn’t, he just wants to be remembered because of the job he has, third-term imperial mayor of New York.

“I want to go out being, having a reputation as a very good, maybe the greatest mayor ever,” Bloomberg said one week ago on “Meet the Press.”

So Bloomberg, like his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani, becomes another mayor who seems almost intoxicated by the power that comes with the office and the title. Only it is never the mayor who is great, always the city.

Bloomberg thinking this way, thinking out loud this way on national television, is just another example of the jockey confusing himself with the horse, as if Ron Turcotte had confused himself once with Secretariat.

So true!

It is never just the city of money, where the mayor who wants to be remembered as the greatest of them all talks about $80 million disappearing from a mosh pit known as the CityTime project this way: “Big projects have big things that slip through the cracks.”

You can take the Daily News Poll here: Greatest mayor ever?

(Right now, votes marking “Absolutely not! He’s not even close.” are at 68%.)

Read more, take the poll, and comment! But come back here!

Photo: Lombard for News