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Henican: New Yorkers blanked in presidential race

Ellis Henican

February 29, 2008

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Oh, what fun we could have had this year were it not for the New York Curse!

There was a moment, not two months ago, when three living, breathing New Yorkers were plausible presidents of the United States, two of them hogging the top spots in all the national polls.

Doesn't that feel like 417 years ago?

We had Mike of Manhattan. We had Hillary of Chappaqua. And we had Rudy of That-Big-Bubble-That-Follows-Him-Everywhere-and-Makes-Him-Think-He's-Smarter-Than-Anyone-Else-in-the-Room.

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A mirage. The whole thing was just a cruel mirage.

Rudy's bubble burst first, for reasons too tedious to go into again. And without angelic intercession in Texas and Ohio, Hillary's is most likely to burst next, despite the fact that the money came rolling in during February.

Then came Mike's news yesterday.

"I think the best way I can make a difference in this country is by being a mayor that makes a difference in the city," he said when he'd finally gathered the City Hall reporters before him at noontime. "New York City is a bellwether. It is a leader in ways that I don't think New Yorkers understand ..."

Blah, blah, blah ...

It was obvious what he was doing with all the happy chatter. He was flailing in the grip of the New York Curse.

Giving up already, Mr. Mayor? Of course you are. You never had a chance with these presidential dreams of yours and Kevin Sheekey's. New Yorkers go nowhere from here. New Yorker is the last irrepressible prejudice in American politics, stronger than any bias against a race, gender, age or religion. We'd all like to think it's because we're smarter, shrewder and more sophisticated than all those yokels out there. But let's just agree: We're different.

Just look at the scoreboard.

It's 0 for 3 this year - and 0 for about 4,000 over the past six decades. We have to go all the way back to FDR to see a moving van carry furniture from these parts to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The evidence of 2008 says Americans will vote for a black man. Some, though not as many as expected, will even vote for a white woman. But the New York Curse lives on.

"President" John Lindsay discovered that. So did "President" Al Smith. There's even a Downstate-Upstate corollary, as proven by "Governors" Tom Suozzi and Ed Koch.

Bloomberg, showing what a grown-up he is, made the best of this yesterday.

He vowed to spend his time "getting the ideologies out of the decision-making process." He promised he "will not be reticent" about expressing his opinions. "I will use the bully pulpit of New York," he said.

It's way too soon to write another verse to "New York, New York." But Bloomberg sounded faintly like a hometown lyric-writer when he said almost plaintively: "If you can make a difference here, the marketplace will take it elsewheres."

But he knew the score - and I don't mean Frank Sinatra's musical rendition. He knows that from the job of mayor of the Greatest City Ever, no one goes anywhere else.

And honestly, it really may be for the best. Truly, there would have been some major stumbles had the mayor's quirky New York-isms really been dragged coast to coast.

Would Alabama have ever embraced the Bloombergian aversion to trans-fats? Would Detroit?

Could a U.S. president really jet off to Bermuda for the weekend? Could he fly his own plane there and refuse to share his itinerary with anyone?

Would congestion pricing ever work at the border in San Diego and Laredo?

There are cities, far dinkier than New York, that are genuine cradles for future presidents. Boston. Hope, Ark. Who knew?

But inconsequential though they are, they have something over us in the quadrennial presidential sweepstakes.

They aren't in the grip of the New York Curse.