The New York Times’ Real Feelings on Term Limits

The funny thing about the New York Times editorial yesterday about getting rid of term limits (10/1/08) is that the Times
editorial board members no doubt tell themselves that they make up
their own minds on issues based on the merits, not on whom their boss
has had dinner with. Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal would like
you to think that publisher Arthur Sulzberger is a disinterested
colleague who likes to be kept informed: "If we're changing a
long-standing position, or staking out a position on a very big issue,
I make sure that Arthur knows what we are doing and is comfortable with
it," is how he puts it.

But surely Michael Bloomberg knows how the newspaper business works: When he wants a third term, he goes to Sulzberger
and the other newspaper barons in town because he knows they can
deliver what he needs: their newspaper's support, which comes in the
form of the editorials endorsing term-limit scrapping that appeared over the past couple of days.

And the funny thing is, you almost feel like the Times editorial
yesterday was trying to let you in on the secret–that the arguments
that it was putting forward for changing the rules so that Bloomberg
can keep being mayor were so absurd that they were intended to convey
that the board really felt the opposite way. Like the idea that the
city doesn't need term limits because it has "a strong public
campaign-financing system"–this when Bloomberg got reelected by outspending his opponent in 2006 by $78 million to $9.5 million.

And although the paper used to say that term limits that the
electorate voted for twice should only be overturned via another
referendum, the Times now says "a vote by the Council
is probably the most democratic way to address the matter" because
special elections "do not attract many voters"–surely that's not an
actual claim that the city council is more likely than a referendum to
express the electorate's real position on term limits, but an attempt
to signal that the board has to conceal its own true feelings?

As it happens, the New York Times editorial board
has made those feelings clear–in a discussion about the nightmare of
unlimited terms threatening to strike Venezuela. That editorial,
published less than a year ago (12/1/07),
described ending term limits is not as an attempt to "serve the larger
cause of democracy" by giving "voters the ability to choose between
good politicians and bad," as it is when Bloomberg tries to do it, but
rather Chavez seeking "the option to stand for re-election as many
times as he wants" as part of "his plan to become president for life."

In Venezuela, getting rid of term limits is an essential part of
Chavez's "lunge for power": "His favorite provisions, of course, would
extend the presidential term from six to seven years and remove
presidential term limits." This scheme should be rejected by voters
"for the sake of Venezuela's battered democracy"–oddly enough, given
that in New York City, term limits "severely limit" "the bedrock of
American democracy…the voters' right to choose," and therefore should
be eliminated by the City Council, even though the voters have chosen
them twice.

Of course, in Venezuela, as the Times points out,
there is the problem of the president using oil wealth to "buy up
popular support." That's not a problem in a city where the billionaire
mayor can outspend his opponent by 8 to 1–or is it? Editorial board,
blink twice if you understand what I'm saying.