NEW YORK, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Michael Bloomberg was sworn in as mayor of New York City for the third time in two days shortly after noon Tuesday. He was formally sworn in by the City Clerk on Monday afternoon, then again right after midnight that night at Times Square by outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and on Tuesday by Chief Justice Judith Kaye of the New York State Court of Appeals.
The temperature was 28 degrees and a freezing wind was blowing, but an estimated 4,000 people were there for the ceremonies. Bloomberg's words, of course, were closely scanned for hints of which direction he would take the city, even though past inaugural addresses have not usually been remembered nor have they provided much hint about which way things were to go.
In the case of Bloomberg's speech, what immediately jumped to mind is that he took a line closely reminiscent to that taken nationally by George Bush the elder in 1988 when he succeeded Ronald Reagan: "kindler, gentler." In other words, he promised to continue Rudy Giuliani's policies without Giuliani's style of confrontation.
Of course, whether it is possible to follow the policies without the style is an open question. The mayor of New York is as much or more an ideological position as a management one. With the city's huge bureaucracy and ferocious media, it is often necessary to speak at the top of one's lungs in order to be heard at all.
Although Bloomberg has made it clear that he is willing to be more verbally accommodating to the half of New York City that was opposed to Giuliani before the events of 9-11 turned him into an icon, it remains unclear what that will mean in practice.
In his speech, the new mayor promised to rebuild the city, restore its infrastructure, to fight crime, and to reform education. His specific demand on the last question was that he be given control of the education system instead of the current Board of Education, a request made by the outgoing mayor with no success.
The new mayor focused on the need for sacrifice to deal with the city's budget problems, and, by invoking Hugh Carey's role in the 1975 fiscal
crisis, reminded insiders of Carey's "the days of wine and roses are over" speech that year.
Symbolically, Bloomberg said he would slash the mayor's staff by 20 percent, and asked other major city officials to do the same. One is reminded of
Charlie Peters' complaint in The Washington Monthly that every president comes in promising to slash the White House staff, finds it isn't a good
idea, and spends the rest of his term figuring out ways to get around the promise.
Bloomberg has made 29 major appointments to his administration so far. Most of them have been old hands in city government, and so far seem to confirm the idea that his self-conception is that of a manager. As a group, they give little more information about Bloomberg's likely future course than his $69 million campaign last year did.
Bloomberg was a liberal Democrat until he switched parties to run as a Republican last year. In fact, his barely winning coalition in last year's election (he won by the smallest margin -- 36,000 votes -- in the history of Greater New York's general elections) closely resembled, not that of Rudy Giuliani, but that of John Lindsay in 1965. Like Lindsay, he combined a sweep of his own East Side of Manhattan with a strong showing in
traditionally Republican areas in the outer boroughs and a better-than-normal but still losing result in the minority areas of the city.
In his speech, he went out of his way to praise the Republican president and the Republican governor. That was probably needed in order to dampen the widespread speculation that he may switch parties again in order to win re-election in this very Democratic city.
Events, and the responses to them, drive politicians as much or more than their own intentions. If the economy of the city tanks, Bloomberg will have a rough time of it; if it revives, his road may be smoother than seems likely now.
Despite all the talk of the difficulty of following Rudy, that will only be a problem for Bloomberg if the city remains in a crisis mode. Rudy is a man for tough times, but, like Churchill or Clemenceau, he is a man people don't want
to have around in good times.
In other words, the best judgment that insiders can make after the wild ride of 2001 is that Mike Bloomberg will have a better time of it if things go well than he will if things go badly.
You don't need to be an expert to make that prediction, but on the first day of the 1,461 days of Bloomberg's first term, that's about the only prediction that is likely to be correct.
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(UPI National Political Analyst Jim Chapin is a native New Yorker and a historian who has been involved in Democratic politics for three decades. Before joining UPI in 2000, he was senior policy adviser to New York City Public Advocate Mark Green. His column on New York politics appears weekly.)
