Bloomberg has been 10 times the mayor that Giuliani was. His administration is more civil, and so is the city, and he is a more competent manager, just on his experience in business alone, than his predecessor ever was. But he is as ambitious as Giuliani ever was in New York, and is never wrong, not on the Olympics, not on a West Side stadium for the Jets, not on congestion pricing, not when he wants the area on Broadway south of 42nd St. and almost all the way to Madison Square Garden turned into our big, bad city's version of the Champs Élysées.
Michael Bloomberg doesn't come right out and say that he wants to be able to run for a third term and then let the voters decide to keep him on - even though voters have already come out in favor of term limits twice - because that is never his game. He never came out and said he wanted to run for President earlier this year - he was cute as a June bug letting other people do that.
But suddenly someone who once thought the idea of reversing the city's law on term limits was more odious to him than cigarette smoke now says that if Quinn and the rest of the Council bring him legislation, well, he would certainly have to take a look at it. It is worth pointing out that Quinn, who has her own ambitions about being mayor someday, is also out of a job next year, along with enough of her City Council to start a softball team.
And Bronx Councilman Oliver Koppell, another who would eventually have to find other work if term limits hold, says that if Quinn doesn't do something about changing the law, he plans to introduce legislation of his own. So here we are.
It's clear how much Bloomberg likes the job he has, running the city as an imperial mayor. So did the guy before him. The problem is the same for both of them: same law, the one saying the job has to end. At which point it's not the city's job to find them something to do.