New York is battered, paralyzed, partially drowned. But Mike Bloomberg, who has not always performed well in moments of crisis, is still standing. Our eternal mayor spent the weekend calmly preparing the city for this dreadful storm, a beacon of seriousness amid the media alarmism. And at 10.30am on Monday night, while half of Manhattan went without power, there he was at the office of emergency management, praising New Yorkers for working together and insisting:

“We’ll get through this the way we always do.”

I have never been an admirer of Mike Bloomberg. He should not even be in office for this extra, legal third term, and his post-9/11, get-rich-quick administration has continuously eroded the civic connections he extolled last night. But in the midst of disaster, and with other regional politicians desperate to appear in charge and on camera, Bloomberg’s deliberate, unprepossessing governance has been a massive relief. Alongside a team of public officials, he has detailed everything from the height of the waters to the state of the power grid, and when reporters have asked him for impossible statements about the cost of the disaster or the second that transport will resume, he’s brushed them off with an understandable exasperation. Prognostication is not his job.

Whatever Mitt Romney has claimed about privatizing Fema, a storm like this makes even the most corporatist figures value our public services and the unique abilities they have to put things right. And while Bloomberg has rarely shown respect for the public sector, these past few days have been different. The transit authority, the emergency services, the school system, the parks department: Bloomberg has gone out of his way to work with them, and, at last, after a whole decade, he’s acting like a mayor rather than a CEO.

Elsewhere in the region, our politicians are playing to type. Cory Booker, the showboating mayor of Newark, deluged Twitter last night with promises to come pick up individual Newark residents, like some governmental carpool mom, or else regurgitated treacly stiff-upper-lip Victorian verse – the same verse, I can’t help but mention, that the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh chose as his final testament. Or else there was Chris Christie, wearing a custom “Chris Christie: Governor” fleece and angry as usual, who berated New Jerseyans who’d stayed in their homes as “selfish and stupid”. Luckily, some adviser told him not to scare off the children: Christie promised that, if conditions warranted, he would sign an executive order to reschedule Halloween.

Dannel Malloy, the Connecticut governor, had warned of “catastrophe” and issued “a Katrina-like warning” Monday. And New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo – a man with keener presidential ambitions than even his New Jersey counterpart – was down at the World Trade Center site last night, desperate to project first-responder machismo. Bloomberg, by contrast, stuck to the facts. He understood that real reassurance comes not from TV or Twitter antics, but from seeing government in action.

The real challenge starts now. The New York subway system, over a century old, has experienced its worst disaster in history; if trains are running later this week, it’ll be a miracle. Power could be out for days. Parts of Manhattan are underwater, while in Queens, homes have been washed away or have gone up in flames.

What matters now is not only that New York recovers, but that the recovery takes place on an equal plane. Socially and economically, this is a city divided; we lavish money and attention on the most prosperous neighborhoods while peripheral sections fray and fester.

You can already feel that in the media coverage. Whole neighborhoods of outer Brooklyn and Queens have been devastated, but what are the two emblems of this storm so far? A flooded carousel designed by one of the world’s richest architects, and a crane alongside the most expensive residential building in the country. The majority of the city, and their suffering, is already at risk of being forgotten.

We have been here once before, however. In his 11 long years in office, perhaps no moment has shamed Mike Bloomberg more than his response to the 2010 blizzard, when Fifth Avenue got ploughed immediately, but the less prosperous neighborhoods suffered for a week or more. It was deplorable. The press flayed him for the unequal response, and Bloomberg’s ratings dove; they have barely recovered since.

That blizzard, sad to say, now looks like nothing more than a test run for the real crisis of Bloomberg’s mayoralty. When Hurricane Irene threatened New York last year, Bloomberg was keen to avoid the mistakes he’d made during the snowstorm. During that hurricane, Bloomberg showed that he would not be rumbled twice.

Now, the disaster is really here. The recovery is going to be grim, arduous and very expensive. So, here are some words I never thought I’d write, and doubt I’ll have occasion to again: right now, I am glad that Mike Bloomberg is in charge.