they had, but also as a man they wished would run for president. But the lethal crash of a construction crane in Manhattan on Friday - the second within three months - looks like it could change that almost overnight.

Over the weekend, the mayor who could do no wrong was humiliated first by New York

State Governor David Paterson announcing a state investigation into his city's building codes and safety standards, and then a City councillor demanding another from Washington. As if Bloomberg couldn't tell both Washington and New York State how to run their offices: both of them are broke while Bloomie has taken New York City from a $6 billion deficit to a $3 billion surplus.

For once, the sanguine little guy was testy. "There's nothing wrong with the Department of Buildings," he snapped at Governor Paterson's back-stabbing initiative. "The Department didn't crash. The crane crashed."

There lies the rub: to New Yorkers there is special significance to cranes falling out of the sky. They have been