NY Times: Christine Quinn Is A Petulant, Tantrum-Prone Child

We already have a mayor in Bloomberg who acts like a two year old - needs to get his way all of the time, throws tantrums when things don't go his way, and is prone to petulant outbursts when slighted.

The NY Times says Christine Quinn is even worse:

As she pursues a high-profile bid for mayor, Ms. Quinn, a Democrat, has proudly promoted her boisterous personality, hoping that voters will embrace her blend of brashness and personal charm.

But in private, friends and colleagues say, another Ms. Quinn can emerge: controlling, temperamental and surprisingly volatile, with a habit of hair-trigger eruptions of unchecked, face-to-face wrath.

She has threatened, repeatedly, to slice off the private parts of those who cross her. 

She is sensitive to slights: When a Queens councilwoman neglected to credit Ms. Quinn in a news release, the speaker retaliated by cutting money for programs in her district. 

Ms. Quinn’s staff, concerned that angry tirades could be overheard by outsiders, added soundproofing to her City Hall office. Wary of her temper, they are known to ask one another: “Did she throw up on you today?” 

Ms. Quinn is by no means the first hotheaded politician in New York — Fiorello H. La Guardia and Rudolph W. Giuliani, both former mayors, were famed for their outbursts. 

But those who have felt Ms. Quinn’s ire up close — in meetings, on telephone calls, even over lunches in restaurants — say they are often stunned by the intensity of her episodes.

“It’s just old-fashioned screaming, in a way that you just don’t hear that much,” one former city official said, describing a noisy encounter with the speaker.

Quinn shrugged off the temper problem to the Times, saying that she's too old to change now:

In the interview — which the speaker briefly interrupted to down an Advil with a swig of Starbucks coffee — Ms. Quinn offered no apology for her behavior, saying, “I am who I am.” But she also said she was working on becoming kinder and more measured. “Sometimes I try to give myself a beat or two before I say what I want to say,” she said. 

 

Still, she signaled that modulation was not her top priority. 

“At this point in my life, I’m not going to spend a lot of time focusing on dissatisfaction with who I am, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time tempering my personality,” Ms. Quinn said. “Whatever job I have next, I’m going to be somebody who wants to get things done.” 

“I want to be a better Chris Quinn,” she added. “I don’t want to be a different Chris Quinn.” 

Being a better Christine Quinn might include not exploding on people when you don't get what you want, not retaliating against people you think have slighted you by killing off the funds for their programs, not having Giuliani-like "ferret moments" more than even the famously thin-skinned Giuliani had as mayor.

There's another part of the article that describes how Quinn's staff has to get back to her communications within fifteen minutes or there will be hell to pay, how few people who work with her would go on the record about her temper tantrums because they fear her wrath, how she is "aloof and dismissive" at meetings, often on her Blackberry when people are trying to talk to her.

This Times article is a problem for Quinn.

I know she tried to spin the temper tantrums and volatility as "just trying to get things done," but the overall feeling you're left with after reading the article is that Quinn is an asshole to her staff, to City Council members, to people who meet with her, to family and friends when things do not go her away 100%.

In other words, she has the personality and temperament of a child stuck in the "terrible two's."

You're also left with the feeling that she doesn't particularly care what anybody else thinks about policy, isn't interested in hearing from people with different points of view, and wouldn't think twice about destroying somebody over a perceived slight.

These are not the personality traits of somebody I want in charge of NYC, in charge of the school system, in charge of the NYPD.

We already have had vindictive, petulant control freaks running NYC for the last 20 years.

Isn't it time that we elect somebody mayor of NYC who doesn't act like a two year old?