Political Scene: Bloomberg’s Years As Mayor
With Michael Bloomberg’s twelve-year term as mayor of New York City coming to an end, Ken Auletta and Ben McGrath—who have both written about Bloomberg for the magazine—joined host Amelia Lester on the Political Scene podcast to discuss his time in office and the mark he has left on the city.
Auletta says that Bloomberg’s background in business has been one of his strongest assets—“As an administrator, as an executive, Mike Bloomberg is first class,” he says—as well as one of his greatest liabilities, in that it has resulted in a tendency to over-rely on quantifiable measures of success. And it is impossible to discuss Bloomberg’s mayoralty without bringing up his vast personal fortune, which gave him a certain freedom from partisan politics. It has also caused many observers to ask the question Lester raises: “To what extent did he buy his way into office?”