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Like Rudy's, Bloomberg speech shows ambition

Dan Janison

January 18, 2008

Eight years ago this week, Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered his seventh state-of-the-city address, marking the midpoint of his second and, by law, final term. It was laced with the usual self-congratulation, aimed in part at an audience beyond the five boroughs.

On Thursday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered his seventh state-of-the-city address, marking the midpoint of his second and final term. It, too, was laced with the customary self-congratulation -- and aimed a bit at an audience beyond the five boroughs.

When Giuliani, Bloomberg's possible rival, spoke in City Hall on Jan. 13, 2000, he'd started running for higher office -- U.S. Senate -- without having announced that he was doing so.

And when Bloomberg spoke at the new ice rink in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Thursday, he, too, had started running for higher office -- the presidency -- without saying so.

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Ballot preparations and strategies and planning have moved far enough along now that for billionaire Bloomberg that the only question is whether he pulls the plug in the coming weeks on his unorthodox stealth candidacy -- or embraces it in full.

All this presidential fanfare, though, hides the sobering truth of his day job: Only two years left in office means a shrinkage of municipal power and the prospect of a government adrift.

With economic storm clouds looming, Bloomberg called Thursday for sacrifices by unions. But labor leaders in the room knew full well that Bloomberg now lacks leverage. He leaves in 2009 -- and the latest round of contracts is already negotiated and signed.

Key parts of his broader agenda appear doomed as well. Nobody applauded, for example, when he cited his proposal for tolls on motorists to fund mass transit, a sign of how the plan has stalled.

The seventh-year tones of Giuliani and Bloomberg -- who both won decisive re-elections on the Republican line in a Democratic city two years earlier -- were eerily similar. In their differing styles, both men scoffed at the governance that preceded their own.

Bloomberg hailed innovation -- "the approach I've brought to a city government that was insular, and provincial, and married to the conventional." He even took what sounded like shots at GOP candidates Giuliani and Mitt Romney by slamming "politicians who all of a sudden have embraced xenophobia."

In 2000, Giuliani crowed about "real ideas that changed the way we did things" -- and lectured that without understanding them "there's no question in my mind that the city will go back to the way it was before" -- with high crime, jobs leaving and swollen welfare rolls.

Based on Giuliani's experience, Bloomberg should be wary of this seventh year. During 2000: Giuliani's ratings plunged after his viciously divisive response to a police shooting; he was diagnosed with prostate cancer; he told reporters he'd leave his wife before he told her; and he paraded his then-girlfriend in public. He withdrew from the Senate race later than other Republicans wished, and Hillary Rodham Clinton won the seat. The rest is living history, you might say.

Today Clinton, in her second term as a senator, seeks to resume residence in the White House. Giuliani is in the hunt with his own unorthodox plan to be president, and City Hall comes full circle, on a calendar set by term limits.

"This could be my last state of the city speech," Giuliani said on Jan. 13, 2000. " ... We don't know, but it could be."

Everyone knew he was alluding to the Senate race.

In contrast, Bloomberg said yesterday that he is "particularly looking forward" to his next annual address.

Only the mayor knows if he really means that.