MIKE BLOOMBERG
all about mike bloomberg
Money, Power, Politics
The life of Michael BloomÂberg is full of fascinating, diverse elements that beg for a biographer’s attention. He isn’t just a two-term mayor of New York making a seemingly unstoppable bid for a third term next month. Bloomberg is “curt, profane, cranky and willful,” Joyce Purnick tells us at the start of her biography.
The greatest strength of “Mike Bloomberg” is Purnick’s reporting, which is detailed and delightful. We tag along for Bloomberg’s remarkably lucky first campaign, in 2001. His Republican bid to be mayor looked hopeless but somehow prevailed on the strength of his $74 million spending spree, his opponents’ missteps and the city’s turbulent mood after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
We also get a cleareyed dissection of Bloomberg’s flirtation with a presidential bid in late 2007, when he appeared to be waiting for public entreaties to run.Purnick says she interviewed more than 400 people for the book (including Bloomberg seven times), and it shows.
Purnick calls Bloomberg “stubbornly elusive” and “allergic to introspection.” A case in point: Purnick argues that the greatest spur to Bloomberg’s ambition came in college, when his father died at 57 without having achieved his life dreams. Yet when grieving families expressed worries that their loved ones’ remains might never be salvaged from World Trade Center debris, Purnick writes, “he told them coldly that he had only visited his own father’s grave once.”
During his tenure, public schools have improved, crime rates have continued to decline, racial tensions have ebbed and brisker real estate development has helped the city’s finances. Will Bloomberg still matter 50 years from now? A rocky third term could undo most of his accomplishments to date. Yet Purnick largely sees him as a lasting winner, able to bring technical competence and nonpartisan leadership into the messy world of city politics. You could have the book, click here.
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