I heard today that Mayor Bloomberg of NY has succeeded in persuading the city council to vote in favor of extending term limits for elected officials [1]. This struck at my moral center for leadership, which I elaborated on a few weeks ago [2] – the Cincinnatus model. Cincinnatus was a Roman consul, called by his people to serve as dictator in a war against an invading enemy, and who cast aside the mantle of power as soon as the crisis was over. To me, this is the most noble form of leadership – the leader who recognizes that though weilding power longer may allow them to accomplish more, power corrupts and it is better to limit it and turn over leadership.
Mayor Bloomberg cited the current financial crisis as the reason for this emergency term limit extension. In fact, the people of New York have voted consistently with large margins to limit terms to just two for the Mayor and other elected officials. In contrast to the Cincinnatus story, it is not the people who have called Mayor Bloomberg to serve in a crisis – it is the mayor himself.
In the Cincinnatus model, this is the paragon of corruption. The leader who thinks that they are needed to keep the situation stable, who in the face of the law and the will of the people appeals to crisis to extend their power, is a sign of the susceptibility to corruption. I know nothing of Bloomberg and his relationship to the Wall Street firms that were part of this current financial mess, but it’s at least worth asking if it would be better to have a new mayor if only to avoid the possibility that Bloomberg himself is part of the problem.
Both on the radio today, and in this article, I heard the same story: the extension of term limits is needed to have steady leadership in a time of crisis. Yet, it’s the elected leaders themselves making this determination, not a public outcry for more terms. This is a moral disaster for a democracy, and sets a sleazy precedent for other cities to enact this kind of power-grab.
No more, it seems, do the children of Cincinnatus walk in the halls of power.
[1] NYC mayor wins fight to extend term limits
[2] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/blog/2008/10/08/the-namesake-of-cincinnatus/
