Bloomberg's new war - New York Daily News

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg's newest public enemies.

There is no political capital, none and maybe less than none, for the mayor of New York City as he goes after great big dumb sugar-filled drinks in his city’s restaurants, movie theaters and even street carts.

So Michael Bloomberg can only be doing it because he thinks it is the right thing to do, another way of fighting the obesity epidemic in his city. But you can see already how this knocks people back. Sometimes you think there is a better chance of a major American politician being hit by lightning than doing something like that.

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In the late innings of his third term, the one in which things have always fallen completely apart for New York mayors in the past, Bloomberg now does something else that turns the word “mayor” into what it is supposed to be â€" a verb.

So he doesn’t care if he opens himself up to ridicule by going after drinks over 16 ounces like they are packs of cigarettes. And you don’t have to agree with him on this anymore than you agreed with him on smoking in public. You still have to like the way he is still taking his cuts.

You also have a perfect right to say that if he wants to tell people what kind of soft drinks they can drink, where does he stop? Fair question. But at a time when obesity has become a growing menace here and everywhere, maybe a better way to look at the statement Bloomberg is making is that you have to start somewhere.

“You have a choice as mayor,” he told me Thursday morning. “You can sit around and wring your hands and run out the clock until you leave office in a year-and-a-half. Or you can take a shot at things that matter to you. That’s what I’m doing. I’m not saying all of them are going to work. There are no total solutions. But this is something I believe in, and I’ve never found it to be a burden to have a fight over something you believe in. Please remember all the s---t we took over the smoking thing.”

Bloomberg pauses and says, “I always feel that people are a lot smarter than the Fourth Estate gives them credit for. And you know what people really want from their elected leaders in the end? They want to believe that WE believe in what we’re doing. And I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe in what I’m doing.”

Linda Gibbs, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor in charge of health and human services, puts it another way: “Smoking is on the decline in our city, but obesity, with all its negative health effects, that’s on the increase. What (Bloomberg) is doing is what mayors are supposed to do. People will say he’s demonizing the beverage industry. No. He’s demonizing obesity.”