The Arrogance Of Mike Bloomberg

The Esquire profile.

Bloomberg on himself:

He's so forceful, so absolutely certain of himself. His confidence is a thing with texture and size, grown vast in the hothouse of his fortune.

"I'm not certain," he says. "I'm right."

Other people on Bloomberg:

"There's a we-never-make-mistakes attitude that makes it hard to fix problems," says Steve Banks of the Legal Aid Society. "I don't get the sense that he hears what I'm saying when I talk to him directly," says city comptroller John Liu. "I believe he's the least in touch with ordinary people of any mayor in modern history," says Joel Berg of the Coalition Against Hunger. Small-business advocate Richard Lipsky says Bloomberg's cigarette taxes are costing bodegas and delis $250 million a year. "He called it a minor economic issue — that shows the hauteur." In Brooklyn, councilwoman Letitia James is icy. "Ask my colleagues in Brownsville or East New York what he's done in their districts. Ask them when was the last time they saw the mayor out there, or has the mayor ever visited?"

Even after CityTime, Cathie Black and the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010, Bloomberg STILL thinks he can win the White House in 2012.

He's got $350 million to drop on the race.

We'll see if that works for him.

Right now, he's a national joke.