Mayor Bloomberg Talks about the Job of Governing

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was the guest on Charlie Rose a few nights ago. He and Rose talked about New York City's revival after 9.11 and about what it means to be the mayor of New York. Bloomberg is good at these topics because he was elected mayor for the first time 2 months after 9.11. He's serving his third term and will not run again in 2013 when his term is over.
Bloomberg had many interesting things to say about his experience as mayor. But, what struck me most was his deference to the team he put together and their love of the city and imagination in finding ways to resuscitate it after the Trade Center tragedy.
The mayor repeated many times that what the did was put the team together and then give them the supervised freedom to find the right cures for a traumatized city. They then set out to restructure New York City's districts for greater infrastructure efficiency. They found the right architects and concepts for the new Trade Center area that is now rising. They took risks in inviting new industries into the city, re-establishing NCY as the world's financial capital, redeveloping tourism, rebuilding the entertainment component so that now NYC competes with Hollywood for film-making. They are now working with world-class universities to create engineering and information technology mini campuses in the city because, as Mayor Bloomberg explained, most innovative industry is created near the universities that nurtured those with the ideas.
That is all simple enough in the abstract. but, Bloomberg added, "I'm a numbers person" and so he watched over the innovative government projects, encouraged private industry to help, and found ways, for example, to get agreement from the multiple NYC and New York state and New Jersey public entities so that the new Trade Center project could get off the drawing boards.
You may say, so what.
But, that would miss the point. Michael Bloomberg created the atmosphere of innovation, creativity and civic responsibility that brought New York City back from the brink of collapse after 9.11. Without his strong executive leadership and light touch in allowing innovation to succeed, always supporting the innovators when something just didn't work out, Michael Bloomberg would have been simply another mayor of a major American city losing ground to international competition and domestic malaise.
But, Mayor Bloomberg understood the problems. He found the people to fix them. He gave them both the freedom and support they needed to succeed. And, it worked.
Wouldn't it be marvelous if America could find just such a person to become President in 2012? Wouldn't it be invigorating for the USA to once again find that executive leadership exists, that it can harness the best in Americans, and that the combination works.
That should be the goal of every American as the 2012 presidential season begins in earnest.