Steamroller, Jr.

For the mayor, the worst thing about his failed congestion pricing plan might be how badly he comes off in an executive role. Because if he can’t be bothered to bring along the Democrats in the New York State Legislature on congestion pricing (and reducing traffic and helping the environment is a natural ideological fit here — it’s not like he’s trying to get a flat tax or something!) then how would he be much better at bringing Congress together on stuff like Iraq or immigration or whatever else will be an issue during a Bloomberg Administration? Which is to say, Kevin Sheekey’s aspirations to become the next John Podesta or Andrew Card are over:

It was supposed to be different this time. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides conducted elaborate analyses and an intricate media campaign, not to mention all the detailed strategy sessions with advocates and experts, to develop and promote the mayor’s traffic congestion pricing plan.

Yet, despite ads on cable television, a video on YouTube and the mayor’s passionate pleas from church pulpits, the proposal never got very far in the State Legislature.

At a news conference in Brooklyn yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg denounced lawmakers for failing to even take up his plan, suggesting that they lacked “guts” and that their inaction would result in children being exposed to polluted air. “Albany just does not seem to get it,” he said.

But state officials and political operatives said it was Mr. Bloomberg who did not get it as he and his aides pursued a doomed strategy, one that all but guaranteed a replay for congestion pricing of the failed efforts to bring a football stadium to the Far West Side of Manhattan and the 2012 Olympics to the city.

Last night, state leaders grappled with whether to give the mayor a second chance as they negotiated with him to see if some version of his plan could be salvaged. But whatever ultimately emerged, state officials said, was unlikely to resemble what the mayor originally proposed.

State officials and operatives on both sides of the issue described what they saw as the strategic missteps made by the administration over the past few months.

Rather than engaging either Gov. Eliot Spitzer or legislative leaders from the beginning, they said, Mr. Bloomberg and his aides sprang a complex proposal on the Legislature at the end of its session, seemed unprepared to answer questions or revise details, missed opportunities to sway legislators, and then used the deadline to apply for federal financing as a bludgeon to shove the plan through.

“The constant drumbeat of the deadline may have done more harm than good — people got their backs up,” said Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, who favored the plan. “People don’t like to have a gun to their head.”

The missteps that led this latest ambitious project to the verge of collapse, said the officials and operatives, many of whom would speak only on condition of anonymity because they feared jeopardizing the negotiations, showed how Mr. Bloomberg’s operation, increasingly adept at promoting the mayor’s national reputation, has not yet learned to navigate the city’s business through the politics of Albany.

. . .

Then, as Mr. Bloomberg became increasingly confrontational over the past week — saying on Monday of legislators who said they needed more time to weigh the issues, “It’d be pretty hard to not know about congestion pricing if you can read,” — he sowed ill will, confirming for some legislators a sense that he and his aides held them in contempt.

“I just don’t think they hold the legislative process in high regard anyway,” Mr. Brodsky said. “They see it as an obstacle to getting things done.”

And posting a video on YouTube is not what they mean when they talk about the “YouTube Presidency” . . .

In the Post-9/11 Era, people seemed to love badasses. Bush basically ruined that for everyone, didn’t he (Elliot Spitzer comes off as so 2004!)? I doubt voters really desire another cowboy. Hang it up, Sheekey — I want to read about something else in New York Magazine!