New Yorker on Elections!
REG [at a meeting of the People’s Front of Judea]: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
ATTENDEE: Brought peace?
—“Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”
One of the most successful politicians of the first century before the Christian era was Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was reputedly not only the richest man in Rome but also, by one accounting, the eighth-richest man who has ever lived. His fortune was pegged (by Pliny the Elder) at upward of two hundred million sesterces. Most of those millions were in real estate, some of it acquired in a manner strikingly like the operations of health-insurance companies a couple of millennia later. Crassus had his own private fire department, and if your house caught fire his representatives would offer to buy it on the spot, at a one-time-only, fire-sale price that would fall rapidly as the flames climbed. If you said yes, you’d get a few sesterces, after which Crassus’ firefighters would do their thing. If you said no, you’d end up with a pile of ashes. (No public option being available, few owners were in a position to quibble.)
“Rome had in very truth become the city where everything was for sale,” the classicist Edith Hamilton wrote. Crassus eagerly deployed his wealth in the service of his political ambitions. He funded charitable enterprises, used interest-free loans to put influential citizens in his debt, provided the less affluent with sustenance, and peopled his payroll with the best political operatives money could buy. He eventually got himself elected consul, the city’s highest office, in which, the chroniclers tell us, he did a perfectly adequate job. Crassus may not have had Pompey’s military genius or Caesar’s supreme eloquence, but he was not without political talent. According to Plutarch, Romans “looked upon him as a diligent and careful man, ready to help and succor his fellow-citizens. Besides, the people were pleased with his courteous and unpretending salutations and greetings, for he never met any citizen, however humble and low, but he returned him his salute by name.” On the other hand, the great historian notes, “the many virtues of Crassus were darkened by the one vice of avarice.” But without the avarice he wouldn’t have had the money, and without the money he wouldn’t have had the consulship. Or a prime spot in “Plutarch’s Lives.”
Even by the differing standards of their respective eras, Michael Bloomberg is a nicer guy than Marcus Crassus. It’s hard to imagine Mayor Mike crucifying six thousand miscreants up and down the length of Broadway, as his Roman counterpart did to Spartacus’ defeated rebels along the Via Appia. But there’s no denying that our esteemed mayor (and he is esteemed) is a very rich man who is where he has been for the past eight years, and where he will remain for the next four—City Hall—because, like Crassus, he’s as rich as Croesus. How rich? Well, according to the latest Forbes 400 list, Michael Bloomberg’s net worth is $17.5 billion. That’s shorthand for seventeen thousand five hundred million dollars. That’s a stack of hundred-dollar bills twelve miles high.
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Bloomberg isn’t the eighth-richest man who ever lived—just the eighth-richest American alive right now, Forbes reckons—but he is by far the richest person in the city he governs. The Times reports that he will have personally spent well over a hundred million dollars getting reëlected this year, noting, “He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.” But even that’s not the bottom line, not really. Bloomberg isn’t just the city’s biggest getter; he’s also the city’s—and the nation’s—biggest giver. Last year, he showered two hundred and thirty-five million dollars in cash on organizations that do all kinds of good works in fields like health, education, and the arts. Good works are a good thing. When it comes to political power, though, Bloomberg’s giving has been a powerful strategic asset to Bloomberg’s getting. Five hundred-plus of the twelve hundred-plus recipients of the Mayor’s personal largesse are based in the city. The world of nonprofits and charity dinners and patronage of the arts includes a large swath of the city’s power élite. One may note that the Mayor had the support, tacit or open, of that élite when he contrived to overturn the law, twice approved by the voters, that would have barred him from a third term. One may also note that he enjoys similar support from the city’s most prominent black pastors, whose churches and causes benefit from what the Times calls his “unusual combination of city money, private philanthropy, political appointments and personal attention,” even though his opponent (for the record, that would be the current city comptroller, Bill Thompson) is African-American.
In broad outline, New Yorkers know all this. We know that we’re bought and paid for. We know that there is something unseemly, even humiliating, about submitting ourselves to be ruled by the richest man in town. We know that the muscling aside of term limits, whatever the law’s merits, was a travesty. We know that the Mayor’s campaign this time has been puzzlingly, pettily negative. Yet we will, most of us, troop to the polls on Tuesday and pull the lever for Mayor Mike. The truth is that Michael Bloomberg has been a very good mayor. The record is mixed, of course, but the mixture is largely positive. Crime is down. Public education is better, owing mainly to the Mayor’s takeover of the system. The racial rancor of Giuliani Time is gone. People are healthier and longer-lived, and it would be rash to suggest that the Mayor’s nanny-state initiatives—his smoking bans, his banishment of trans fats, his posted calorie counts—have had nothing to do with this happy development. He has fought the good fight for congestion pricing and gun control. His plans for a West Side football coliseum were thwarted, thank God, and his new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets cost the city a bundle and are unfriendly to fans of modest means, but his bike lanes are terrific and his transformation of Times Square into a people’s piazza was visionary, fun, and cheap.
The Mayor has ruled us well, but he has infantilized us. We are a little too much like the passive Romans of Crassus’ day, when the institutions of the old republic were giving way to a despotic (and competent) imperium. “People got used to the idea of them,” Edith Hamilton wrote of Crassus and his fellow-triumvirs, Pompey and Caesar, “and when four years later their powerful organization was completed and they began to act openly, honored and honorable patriots could find excellent reasons for acquiescing in their running the city. Indeed, it seemed exceedingly probable that if they did not do so there would be nobody to run it.” If Bloomberg had been satisfied with two terms, he would be leaving office a beloved legend, a municipal god. He’ll get his third, but we’ll give it to him sullenly, knowing that while it probably won’t measure up to his first two—times are hard, huge budget gaps are at hand—it’ll probably be good enough. The Pax Bloombergiana will endure a while longer. But then what? Will we have forgotten how to govern ourselves?
ATTENDEE: Brought peace?
—“Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”
One of the most successful politicians of the first century before the Christian era was Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was reputedly not only the richest man in Rome but also, by one accounting, the eighth-richest man who has ever lived. His fortune was pegged (by Pliny the Elder) at upward of two hundred million sesterces. Most of those millions were in real estate, some of it acquired in a manner strikingly like the operations of health-insurance companies a couple of millennia later. Crassus had his own private fire department, and if your house caught fire his representatives would offer to buy it on the spot, at a one-time-only, fire-sale price that would fall rapidly as the flames climbed. If you said yes, you’d get a few sesterces, after which Crassus’ firefighters would do their thing. If you said no, you’d end up with a pile of ashes. (No public option being available, few owners were in a position to quibble.)
“Rome had in very truth become the city where everything was for sale,” the classicist Edith Hamilton wrote. Crassus eagerly deployed his wealth in the service of his political ambitions. He funded charitable enterprises, used interest-free loans to put influential citizens in his debt, provided the less affluent with sustenance, and peopled his payroll with the best political operatives money could buy. He eventually got himself elected consul, the city’s highest office, in which, the chroniclers tell us, he did a perfectly adequate job. Crassus may not have had Pompey’s military genius or Caesar’s supreme eloquence, but he was not without political talent. According to Plutarch, Romans “looked upon him as a diligent and careful man, ready to help and succor his fellow-citizens. Besides, the people were pleased with his courteous and unpretending salutations and greetings, for he never met any citizen, however humble and low, but he returned him his salute by name.” On the other hand, the great historian notes, “the many virtues of Crassus were darkened by the one vice of avarice.” But without the avarice he wouldn’t have had the money, and without the money he wouldn’t have had the consulship. Or a prime spot in “Plutarch’s Lives.”
Even by the differing standards of their respective eras, Michael Bloomberg is a nicer guy than Marcus Crassus. It’s hard to imagine Mayor Mike crucifying six thousand miscreants up and down the length of Broadway, as his Roman counterpart did to Spartacus’ defeated rebels along the Via Appia. But there’s no denying that our esteemed mayor (and he is esteemed) is a very rich man who is where he has been for the past eight years, and where he will remain for the next four—City Hall—because, like Crassus, he’s as rich as Croesus. How rich? Well, according to the latest Forbes 400 list, Michael Bloomberg’s net worth is $17.5 billion. That’s shorthand for seventeen thousand five hundred million dollars. That’s a stack of hundred-dollar bills twelve miles high.
read more
Bloomberg isn’t the eighth-richest man who ever lived—just the eighth-richest American alive right now, Forbes reckons—but he is by far the richest person in the city he governs. The Times reports that he will have personally spent well over a hundred million dollars getting reëlected this year, noting, “He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.” But even that’s not the bottom line, not really. Bloomberg isn’t just the city’s biggest getter; he’s also the city’s—and the nation’s—biggest giver. Last year, he showered two hundred and thirty-five million dollars in cash on organizations that do all kinds of good works in fields like health, education, and the arts. Good works are a good thing. When it comes to political power, though, Bloomberg’s giving has been a powerful strategic asset to Bloomberg’s getting. Five hundred-plus of the twelve hundred-plus recipients of the Mayor’s personal largesse are based in the city. The world of nonprofits and charity dinners and patronage of the arts includes a large swath of the city’s power élite. One may note that the Mayor had the support, tacit or open, of that élite when he contrived to overturn the law, twice approved by the voters, that would have barred him from a third term. One may also note that he enjoys similar support from the city’s most prominent black pastors, whose churches and causes benefit from what the Times calls his “unusual combination of city money, private philanthropy, political appointments and personal attention,” even though his opponent (for the record, that would be the current city comptroller, Bill Thompson) is African-American.
In broad outline, New Yorkers know all this. We know that we’re bought and paid for. We know that there is something unseemly, even humiliating, about submitting ourselves to be ruled by the richest man in town. We know that the muscling aside of term limits, whatever the law’s merits, was a travesty. We know that the Mayor’s campaign this time has been puzzlingly, pettily negative. Yet we will, most of us, troop to the polls on Tuesday and pull the lever for Mayor Mike. The truth is that Michael Bloomberg has been a very good mayor. The record is mixed, of course, but the mixture is largely positive. Crime is down. Public education is better, owing mainly to the Mayor’s takeover of the system. The racial rancor of Giuliani Time is gone. People are healthier and longer-lived, and it would be rash to suggest that the Mayor’s nanny-state initiatives—his smoking bans, his banishment of trans fats, his posted calorie counts—have had nothing to do with this happy development. He has fought the good fight for congestion pricing and gun control. His plans for a West Side football coliseum were thwarted, thank God, and his new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets cost the city a bundle and are unfriendly to fans of modest means, but his bike lanes are terrific and his transformation of Times Square into a people’s piazza was visionary, fun, and cheap.
The Mayor has ruled us well, but he has infantilized us. We are a little too much like the passive Romans of Crassus’ day, when the institutions of the old republic were giving way to a despotic (and competent) imperium. “People got used to the idea of them,” Edith Hamilton wrote of Crassus and his fellow-triumvirs, Pompey and Caesar, “and when four years later their powerful organization was completed and they began to act openly, honored and honorable patriots could find excellent reasons for acquiescing in their running the city. Indeed, it seemed exceedingly probable that if they did not do so there would be nobody to run it.” If Bloomberg had been satisfied with two terms, he would be leaving office a beloved legend, a municipal god. He’ll get his third, but we’ll give it to him sullenly, knowing that while it probably won’t measure up to his first two—times are hard, huge budget gaps are at hand—it’ll probably be good enough. The Pax Bloombergiana will endure a while longer. But then what? Will we have forgotten how to govern ourselves?
Later Posts/Вперёд
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