'Open Your Eyes'

Mayor Bloomberg, in his state of the city speech yesterday, gave us all a glimpse of the kind of leadership he could, if he runs, provide on the national scene. He abjured tax increases that everyone had been predicting would be the standard move to deal with the pending budget deficits in the city. And then, appearing on stage with families who have roots in China, Colombia, India, and Italy, he "switched gears," as our Grace Rauh characterized it, and ripped into politicians who have suddenly turned against immigrants in the heat of the political fray.

"To those who are wailing against immigration, to those politicians who, all of a sudden, have embraced xenophobia, I say: open your eyes," the mayor said. "Take a look behind me. This is what makes America great. This is New York City. This is freedom. This is compassion, and democracy, and opportunity." Those are sentences, and sentiments, for which, we predict, Mr. Bloomberg will be long remembered — and honored. And we commend them to those who have been scratching their heads over why we have been encouraging him to get into the race.

A great deal of this race, we believe, will be about the general attitude of the those competing for leadership, and one of the tests is going to be whether they are for open-ness, whether they will seek to close America off or open our country up. This extends to our taxes, to our foreign policy, to our regulation of foreign investment, to our regulation of our stock exchanges and the companies on them, to trade in goods, to the international movement of capital, and to the movement of labor — that is, of people.

Mr. Bloomberg's remarks contained what our Ms. Rauh, in her dispatch on page one today, describes as "another swipe" at his predecessor, Mayor Giuliani, by asserting that Mr. Bloomberg had had taken over a "city government that was insular, and provincial, and married to the conventional." That strikes us as bit off if its purpose is to blame Mr. Giuliani, given that Mr. Bloomberg acceded less than half a year after September 11, 2001. But we've sought to caution Mr. Giuliani against getting allied with the anti-immigrant camp, even under the guise of being only against illegal immigrants.

One way to think about the anti-immigrant movement is to think of it as a protectionist surge on the eve of a recession that could turn sharply worse, and the mayor is signaling exactly the right course in terms that will resonate far beyond the city. Ms. Rauh reports that the minority leader of the City Council, James Oddo, said the mayor succeeded at keeping alive speculation that he will run for president, and if that turns out to be true, it will be all the better for his courageous words yesterday.