The Freedom Tower

If New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wins a third term as mayor, he may see the Freedom Tower rise before leaving office, Investor Daily reports. “But don’t underestimate his city’s can’t-do spirit.
This has not been a happy time for New York City. Wall Street is gasping for air, and New York has seen its standing as the world’s financial capital called seriously into question. Arguably, for the time being that “capital” is now Washington D.C.
Now the city has to process the idea of re-electing Mayor Bloomberg to a third term, which would require changing or defying the two-term limit of current law. Like any officeholder with a billion dollars in the bank and a belief his work is not yet finished, Bloomberg thinks it’s a fine idea to run again. He says he’s spurred on by the “unprecedented challenges” brought on by the financial crisis.
We’ll leave it to New York voters to decide if they regard Bloomberg as the man who can steer their city through the Wall Street wreckage. But we do know this: For the past seven years, the city has suffered a painful lack of leadership on its highest-profile issue — rebuilding at the World Trade Center site.
With so many city- and state-level jurisdictions, private-sector interests and egos involved in the reconstruction, the mayor can’t wholly be blamed for the fiasco, which architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable calls “probably . . . the greatest planning fiasco in the history of the world.”

But the site where terrorists destroyed the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, is in the heart of Bloomberg’s city, and he is the one official who can legitimately speak for all its citizens. If the mayor of New York City can’t mobilize public opinion to end the bickering and close the open wound of 9/11, then who can?

This is a question of interest not just to New Yorkers but to all Americans. Al-Qaida homed in on the World Trade Center because they wanted to deliver a death-blow to America’s economic vitality and leadership. At the symbolic level, they succeeded.”