Dear Editor:
Mayor Dawn Zimmer must already be better than even her supporters (like me) dared to dream. Earnest well-wishers now are urging her to meet, if not exceed, the high standards set by President Abraham Lincoln himself!
Mayor Zimmer has therefore been counseled to read one of many books on our 16th President, this one positing (or at least pondering) the notion that his contentious Cabinet was in fact the best possible formula for consensus and nation-building. Many of those Cabinet members openly campaigned against Mr. Lincoln for much of the 1864 Presidential campaign, and Heaven knows a similar set-up can happen in Hoboken, too! So perhaps such advice really is applicable to the Hoboken’s own political fortunes. It’s questionable whether Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet, filled with appointees, directly mirrors that of Hoboken’s City Council, most of whom were elected by clear majority vote, and one of whom, though appointed, was so done by the majority of (the duly elected) City Council itself. Still, as a candidate the mayor was scorned by some for lack of political experience, and dismissed by others as an “idealist.” Indeed, those observations sound much like some of the more polite characterizations of Lincoln in his time. Perhaps the mayor’s newfound well-wishers have reset the bar of higher expectations—for themselves.
Douglas John Bowen