Democrats lambasted Mr. Bush’s exceptionalist foreign policy. Republicans rail against Mr. Obama’s “I-Know-What’s-Best-For-You” paternalism. Yet both parties grant New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg a pass after a Bloomberg-squired October 23, 2008 City Council vote extended term limits to three consecutive four-year terms. I think we’ve seen this movie before.

Autocrats invariably expand power under the ruse of political emergency. Hitler notoriously used the technique with his manipulation of the February 27, 1933 Reichstag Fire (“Der Reichstagsbrand”) and consequent Enabling Act, which allowed his Nazi Party to assume dictatorial powers under the guise of fighting foreign Communist insurgents. Forever deified Franklin Delano Roosevelt justified Japanese-American internment camps as an ineluctable riposte to Pearl Harbor. And “Incurious George” W. Bush initiated warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and detention without habeas corpus as essential components of that eminently malleable nostrum, “The War on Terror.”

Though Monsieur Bloomberg is no fascist, tinpot tyrant, or fundamentalist hawk, in his suppression of voter will he mirrors many of today's monocrats, from fellow media billionaire, the entertaining, if insensitive, Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to the never funny, though always bigoted, illegitimately elected President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to deposed Honduran President Mel Zelaya, who circumvented a judicially mandated voter referendum process, and was, by rights, removed from office. Even Zelaya’s Stalinist comrade, Venezuelan Socialist Hugo Chavez, had the democratic instincts to at least put term limit removal up for voter approval.

In all such cases the autocrat justifies the suspension of voter will, or gross mangling of the democratic process, as a self-ordained popular good. Perhaps because he doesn’t resemble a caricature of far-right evil, and because in word and mien he seems from the Upper East Side manor born, Medford Mike’s electoral machinations received a collective pass from New York insiders. Of course, even faux aristocratic usurpers like Bloomberg invariably sing the same false song as any Boss Tweed. Though, to no surprise, it’s hard to find quotes from Mr. Bloomberg on his brazen act (in part because his wealth and power silenced media courage), the rhetoric of usurpers usually flow along these lines:

A. “The unprecedented crisis we face is so severe that only a person of my capabilities can fix it."
B. “Our” (fill in the blank: nation, city, state, community, Wall Street) “has dramatically improved because of my efforts. We risk everything we’ve accomplished if I leave now.”
C. “The enormous threats and challenges we face necessitate this one-time exception to voter will.”

If you recall, George W. Bush used similar hysterical rhetoric to rush this historically gun-shy country into a colossally destructive war in Iraq. Because he feared losing his fragile pretext for war, Mr. Bush wouldn’t even allow inspectors a few more days to finish their work. It’s no different than Mr. Bloomberg’s rush to overturn voter intent.

After all, if Mr. Bloomberg wanted to run for a third term, he simply had to put the twice-approved term limits law up for referendum. If voters did an about-face and rejected term limits, Mr. Bloomberg could legally run. But Michael Bloomberg couldn’t wait. He was too important to wait. In the Michael Bloomberg narrative, the city couldn’t afford, let alone wait for, another messy, unpredictable, drawn-out term limits initiative.

The beauty of a constitutional democracy is that it takes time to deny rights. It is unwieldy. It is inconvenient. And that is as it should be. Otherwise, politicians would routinely invoke executive orders granting them emergency powers never intended by the constitution of any jurisdiction. And they would willy-nilly overturn voter referendums when it suited their personal whim, thereby destroying voter trust in the referendum process and in the political system itself. And as any tyrant knows, voter powerlessness and concomitant self-defeatism is the perfect opening for the tyrant to assume even greater control.

Naturally, it’s in the interest of plutocrats like Bloomberg to convince those naturally indisposed to power grabs that dire times demand draconian measures. And in this regard Bloomberg has been capitally persuasive. Watch the shameless hypocrisy of New York’s perpetually indignant liberal elite. These card-carrying ACLU members, these permanently outraged critics of Bush-era signing statements, who spend dinner parties decrying the Patriot Act and other violations of due process over Fairway Market brie and fine Tuscan wine, bite their tongues when it comes to Bloomberg’s end run.

These self-same liberals, from Greenpoint to Park Slope, Chelsea to the Upper West Side, NoLita to TriBeca, voted en masse for Barack Obama. First and foremost, because Mr. Obama promised to end the war in Iraq. Secondly, because Obama was a non-threatening black man who made white liberals feel all warm, righteous, and politically correct inside. And, finally, because Obama promised to stop violating the core tenets of not only the U.S. Constitution, but what it means to be American, under the pretext of “national security.”

Yet in the current New York City Mayoral campaign, these same liberals embrace a white Republican (Mr. Bloomberg is listed on the ballot as a Republican, not an Independent) against a black and bona fide life-long liberal Democrat, even though the white candidate has deliberately ignored the legal will of New York voters, many of whom are black, Hispanic, and various other colors besides white. In other words, when it comes to real disempowerment of real New Yorkers (as opposed to sundry jihadists or the cuddly oppressed in faraway places like Tibet and Myanmar), white New York liberals suddenly don’t give a rat’s ass about “hope” or “change.”

And please don’t tell me that Bloomberg’s carefully orchestrated City Council “hearings” on his term limits exception justifies their unilateral suspension. Whether or not Bloomberg directly or indirectly paid activists to back his agenda at those hearings, I can’t verify. But I do know the battle box is the only appropriate venue to overturn a voter referendum, not a hearing where those holding the hearing stand to personally benefit from a change in the law. Bloomberg knew that he could not trust the voters to follow his lead, so he staged the hearings and now this farce of a fair election, where he is outspending his opponent by a 16:1 margin, and silencing doubters of any clout through the obscene magnitude of his war chest.

In a democracy, an emergency, of whatever kind, should never justify overturning a voter referendum. After all, the highly effective, though not always loved, Rudy Giuliani was not granted even a three-month extension of his term, let alone a brand new term, after 9/11. What could be more of a citywide emergency than 9/11? Thousands of people dying from a terrorist attack on city soil do not justify a Mayor suspending voter will, but an extreme bear market does? Clearly Bloomberg views us as artless, ingenuous, dupes. Because, as the Giuliani 9/11 example proves, there is no emergency that ever justifies the suspension of voter will.

For all his narcissistic sense of entitlement, Mike Bloomberg may not be a bad or dangerous man. But if we allow this precedent to be set for extreme executive power, then we are paving the way for someone who’s intentions may not be so pure to pull precisely the same stunt. In a democracy, as any litigant knows, precedent is everything. Electing Bloomberg to an illegitimate third term would set a horrible precedent for this city. We would be lowering the threshold for what is meant by “catastrophic emergency.” In the face of an amorphously defined “emergency” (now defined down by the Mayor to include economic slumps) nothing would stop a future Bloomberg from halting the democratic process and handing over the reins of power to a handpicked “City Continuity Coordinator.”

As the George W. Bush administration showed us, any abomination can be justified under the guise of “national security.” Witness their ingenious creation of the 2007 National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51, which defines “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, REGARDLESS OF LOCATION [my emphasis], that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, ECONOMY [my emphasis], or government functions.” Perhaps Mr. B. was thinking of Executive Directive 51 when he made his decision to sidestep that little technicality called democracy.

Naturally, given the egregious precedent he set, Mike Bloomberg would like you to paint his brazen violation of voter will as just one of among many issues. But it is not one of many issues. It is the ONLY issue. If a tennis player jumps the net and whacks his opponent in the back with his racket, that is not just one play. That act necessitates automatic player disqualification, even if the attacker is one point from match victory. In a situation like the one before New York voters, the only way to express disqualification is by voting against the usurper, whatever his opponent’s qualifications.

Even if, in a third term, King Mike banned Dunkin Donuts, Subway, Chase Bank and other mass market chains from opening even one more outlet in New York, eliminated fossil fuel use in all city buildings and transportation, raised student test scores in Math and English by 100% based on the rigorous national test (not the dumbed down version Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein ginned up to make themselves look better), mandated that all new buildings be LEED Gold certified, finally rebuilt Ground Zero, cut the high school dropout rate to 10%, made the subways as clean and efficient as Zurich’s airport, actually had the cajones to stand up to the inside trading of his Wall Street cronies, mandated organic food at all New York restaurants and delis, and, on the 7th Day, parted the Hudson River, and sent all the Norway Rats to New Jersey, all of which he did not, would not, and could not do, you STILL should not vote for the man. No matter how much money he’s donated to your non-profit. No matter how many times he’s spoken before your community group. No matter how good a neighbor he’s been. How rich. How famous. No matter how financially, and thus politically, self-sufficient he appears to be. And no matter how un-qualified, un-imaginative, and un-prepared you believe that his opponent, Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., is by comparison.

The simple issue, the ONLY issue, is this: Mayor Bloomberg clearly, smugly, and arrogantly violated the voters’ twice-enacted will. While I personally think that term limits should be extended to three terms, THAT IS NOT WHAT THE VOTERS APPROVED. And only the voters, not the City Council, not the Mayor, have the right to make a modification in what term limits means.

Which means that no matter how strong his accomplishments as Mayor, which are open to debate, and no matter how superior he is to his opponent, also open to debate, and no matter how many New York power-brokers and fellow billionaires he has on his side, this one brazen act of power-grabbing should disqualify Mike Bloomberg in the minds of the voters he claims to represent.

In debate, we call this voting on Topicality. A debater could be clearly superior to his opponent in all ways (style, evidence, refutation, cross-examination), but if that stronger debater violates a core tenet of debate -- that a case must fall within the definitional boundaries of the topic -- that superior debater loses. Michael Bloomberg violated the electoral equivalent of Topicality. And for that reason it is incumbent upon all New Yorkers, no matter what your political philosophy, to vote for Bloomberg’s Brooklyn-based challenger, Bill Thompson, on Tuesday, November 3rd.

The sky will not fall if Mr. Bloomberg loses. Rather, what it means to be an American, what it means to be a New Yorker, will be strengthened.