It is instructive to compare and contrast two editorials that appeared in The New York Times over the past few months. The first, from September of last year, argued that abolishing term limits was part of the larger cause of democracy.

This was, of course, when popular mayor Michael Bloomberg was pushing for a change in the term limits law that would allow him to serve for a third term.

Then, Bloomberg’s hometown paper had this to say:

"The bedrock of American democracy is the voters’ right to choose. Though well intentioned…term limits law severely limits that right, which is why this page has opposed term limits from the outset."

The paper’s editors went on to say that particularly when their economy’s under great stress, voters have "the right to decide for themselves " whether an effective and popular leader should stay in office.

Move to Venezuela, however, and the Times applies a very different lens. There, democracy is threatened by the abolition of term limits. In an editorial just before Venezuelans voted on lifting their term-limits law, the same newspaper that loved doing away with term limits in New York, suddenly found some term limits laws to love.

The New York Times urged Venezuelans to vote no. Voters, in what The Times has described as a "battered democracy" "should not yield" wrote the editors. "Mr. Chávez needs to be reminded that Venezuelans believe in their democracy and cherish their right to say no."

Love em or loathe em, when it comes to term limits and the New York Times, it all depends on who you are, and what you do. Can anyone say, "All the hypocrisy that’s fit to print?"