New York's incredible shrinking mayor

As the true dimensions of the damage in New York gradually appear, as the death toll mounts and as chaos at the gas stations and devastation in Staten Island undercut the narrative that the city has responded effectively to the challenge, Mayor Bloomberg looks more like the hapless officials of New Orleans than Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie. The decision to divert badly needed resources to the Marathon looks callow. Big talk about climate change fails to impress; surely if the Mayor was so concerned about climate change he could have invested more time in flood preparations. It’s not the fault of conservative GOP climate skeptics that New York did so little to prepare for the rising sea levels that so trouble the mayor.

The gods of politics are fickle and the winds blowing so hard against Mayor Bloomberg could veer. But he needs to move quickly; New York’s post-Sandy narrative threatens to turn ugly, and nobody loves a scapegoat more than a New Yorker with no gas and no power. A billionaire who thinks a marathon is more important than the well being of middle class homeowners on Staten Island: if that label sticks to Michael Bloomberg, his decision to go for a third term as mayor will go down as one of the classic political blunders in the storied history of New York.