Child to the Man
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Mayor Bloomberg usually behaves like a gentleman, so we wouldn’t want to make too much of his remark, interpreted as a gibe at President Bush, that whoever wins the presidency this time around, “at least we’ll have an adult in office who can lead and can accomplish something.” But we wouldn’t want to let it pass without comment, either.
President Bush has been nothing but gracious to New York City and to Mayor Bloomberg. His tax cuts have been a boon to the New York economy. He chose to have the 2004 Republican National Convention here when he could have chosen other places that might actually vote Republican. He agreed to $20 billion in aid to the city after the attacks of September 11 and he has followed through on his promise. He has been an advocate of the immigration that is the lifeblood of New York. He has nominated a series of New Yorkers — Attorney General Mukasey and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — to high posts in his administration.
For Mr. Bloomberg to turn around and suggest that Mr. Bush is somehow not an adult or that that he is lacking in leadership abilities displays just an uncharacteristic lack of graciousness by the mayor. It may be that Mr. Bloomberg is feeling frustrated by his own lack of leadership abilities — his inability to get a West Side stadium or congestion pricing past the legislature in Albany, the same legislature that has also blocked his plan to evaluate the city’s public school teachers using test scores.
So who is the adult here? Who the leader? Mr. Bush dared to run for governor and then for president, while Mr. Bloomberg seems determined to limit his political career to the five boroughs. We can’t recall an occasion when Mr. Bush described a fellow politician as childish. In fact, in hurling an insult at a politician who managed to obtain an office that Mr. Bloomberg dast not even try for, it is our mayor who looks nothing so much as petulant, all the more so for the fact that Mr. Bloomberg’s usually a class act. The mayor owes our president an apology on behalf of the many New Yorkers who have been safer and more prosperous because of his policies.
