Today Mayor Bloomberg is taking a lot of flack for canceling the New York City Marathon, yesterday he was getting a lot of grief for not canceling. Sometimes it is all about timing, I guess; just as runners were arriving from as far away as Europe and Africa they discovered their reason for being here was gone. “If only he had made the call Wednesday,” was the common complaint.

The fact that Mike waited so long says more about his decision-making style — don’t say yes until I’ve finished talking — than the actual politics of the call. According to the Times, people inside City Hall had been urging him to call it off since the hurricane blew through but he was not to be persuaded. He knows what is right for the city, and sometimes — as in the matters of bike lanes and soda size — it is an admirable stance.

But here he called on none other than Rudy Giuliani for back-up and Rudy (who famously ran the marathon two months after 9.11) said stay the course. True, Rudy was filling a leadership void left by GWB in those days after the terrorist attacks and his stay-strong attitude was just the tonic a lot of New Yorkers wanted. And it was part of that “if we don’t the terrorists win” mentality of the day.

But in retrospect, Rudy was also the guy who insisted that it was safe to live and work downtown right away, when there was still pieces of buildings in the air, and the health problems of so many first responders and reconstructors since have called that decision into question. This was the guy who chose to run for president by just running in Florida. Maybe Mike needs to get a few more people on his speed dial at times like this.

Mayor Nagin did not have a party right after Katrina hit New Orleans, for instance; he waited at least six months. I recall the Big Brother like images of his face, hovering on billboards over the abandoned cars and shuttered buildings at the time of JazzFest. He still managed to get re-elected but NOLA was always a special kind of crazy. And even Bloomberg won’t try for a fourth time. He’ll retire to Bermuda perhaps.