It all started so swimmingly, the relationship between the (supposedly) postpartisan future president, Barack Obama, and New York’s party-shunning mayor, Mike Bloomberg. Remember how they sat right in the window when they got breakfast together, to trumpet their mutual affection to the world? Or how Candidate Obama not only courted Bloomberg’s endorsement, but even considered asking him to be his steady running mate? How they would lavish praise on one another? And how, last year, even as Obama felt bound by party to endorse Bill Thompson, he actually helped Bloomberg his forbidden love by making said endorsement as grudging and meager as humanly possible? Those days seem so long ago. Because it’s clear, from recent events, that Mayor Bloomberg has fallen out of love with Obama. And all that’s left now is the constant bickering of an old married couple.
December 21, 2009: Bloomberg called a provision in the Senate’s health-care reform that would have cut federal Medicaid funding to New York a “disgrace.”
January 15, 2010: Bloomberg came out against Obama’s plan to recoup bailout money by taxing the nation’s largest banks, even going so far as to warn that Obama’s plan would turn New York into Detroit.
January 22: Only a few days later, Bloomberg criticized Obama’s call for Congress to regulate the size of the country’s biggest banks.
January 27: Bloomberg joined a chorus of people questioning the Obama administration’s plan to hold trials for the 9/11 plotters in downtown Manhattan, passive-aggressively saying that “it would be great if the federal government could find a site that didn’t cost a billion dollars.”
February 8: Not long after, Bloomberg questioned whether, if the trials were held in New York, Obama would really repay the city for security like he promised, since “a lot of times the federal government promises to pay and then the monies don’t come.”
March 22: Bloomberg once again criticized the most important thing in the world to Obama — health-care reform — because it doesn’t address our real problems, such as “the total cost of health care in our country” and “the fact that we spend double what they do in Western Europe and have a lower life expectancy.”
March 30: Bloomberg, it was reported today, sent Obama a letter earlier this month that chastised his administration for failing to heed Hizzoner’s recommendations on reining in gun violence simply by enforcing existing laws, which shouldn’t be that difficult if Obama really cared.
