Annals of Narcissism: Mayor Mike Bloomberg, The Ideal New Yorker, But Not The Ideal Mayor

It would be a shame if the mumbo-jumbo up in Albany entirely distracted us from the really remarkable new Times/Cornell/NY1 poll. Though I wouldn't blame someone for thinking that Times reporter David Chen and his top boss Bill Keller made up the results at lunch on Monday, and though I doubt that Bill Thompson's mayoral campaign will do much to take advantage of what a less dully genial candidate might think of as an unmatched opportunity, it is nonetheless the first tangible victory for democracy in the city this year—the first time it seems even possible that Michael Bloomberg's millions might be spent in vain.

In a city where 63 percent of respondents think the economy is "bad," and only 12 percent see it getting "better"; in a city where 59 percent are making "just enough to pay bills" and 38 percent are "very" concerned about being out of a job in the next twelve months; in a city where 80 percent are "concerned" about not having enough money for retirement, is it any surprise that 55 percent think it's "time for a new person" as mayor?

And this in the same poll that finds Bloomberg with an approval rating of 60 percent! I don't think that the wish-fulfillment aspect of his success can be overstated. Here is the ideal New Yorker, the richest man in town, the self-made tycoon, the dry Jewish wit, with the ability to insulate himself from what anyone thinks, an ability that can come across as, simply, assholeish, but that reads to many people as, simply, the dream: as freedom.

But people seem to hope, to assume, that that freedom is the freedom to do things, to make things happen; 59 percent in this poll think that the city's economy is something a mayor "can" do a lot about, which makes it more than a tad disappointing when they perceive that not "a lot" is happening.

And the three things that the respondents identify most closely with the mayor-education, taxes, and the term limits change-happen to be the three things they're most upset about. 54 percent are not satisfied by the quality of the city's public schools, a number that climbs to 61 percent among Black respondents. 58 percent have seen their city taxes rise since the mayor took office. 58 percent disapprove of the term limits extension.

The poll also revealed something shocking: 1% of New Yorkers think that Bloomberg is "Nice guy/pleasant to people." Either New York Observer reporter Azi Paybarah is answering this poll and has Stockholm Syndrome or I do not know who the fuck those 6.83 people are or what they're smoking. For all of Bloomberg's strengths, "nice" and "pleasant" are not the words to describe his attractions.

Forty years ago this summer, Jimmy Breslin wrote a cover article for New York magazine. "Is Lindsay Too Tall to be Mayor?" it was called, when "too tall" means "too Manhattanish, too removed from the problems of the street corners":

John Lindsay was a striking, handsome, cool, towering figure as he walked the streets of Harlem and was acclaimed across the country as future Presidential material. But now, take Lindsay off the front pages of the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times or Chicago Sun-Times and put him on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Put him there with the schools closed and the garbage not picked up and the robberies and assaults way up. Put him there in a crowd of stumpy, bulging, balding Bronxites. Do this, and you do not have a towering figure anymore. You have a bony Protestant from Yale and Wall Street whose height makes him a conspicuous target for the stumpy little people who yell up at him, "Lindsay, make the robbers go away or you go away!"

"Suddenly," Breslin wrote, "it is not good to be so tall and handsome." Now Bloomberg, I assure you, is not a tall fellow, nor is he handsome in the way John Lindsay was handsome. But he is tall and handsome in Breslin's sense, in the sense that 57 percent of the Times poll's respondents say that he "pays too much attention to Manhattan and not enough to the other boroughs."

In fact, height has been an issue for Bloomberg before, an issue of memory, or what many of us would call truth-telling. A month after he was elected in November 2001, Newsday reported that Bloomberg's driver's license gave his height as 5-foot-10, a figure easily 3 or 4 inches too high. Then, on December 31 of that year, with Bloomberg about to be sworn in as mayor, the same paper joined him for an inspection of the stage. "When you're 5-10 like me, you want to make sure the podium isn't too low," he said, not joking. The article continues, "The new mayor has refused to give his actual height." As of December 2006, he hadn't changed his license information.

This combination of inaccuracy and stonewalling, the tendency to fudge facts and then stymie those who try to clarify them, is a defining characteristic of Bloomberg, who is always trying to have it both ways. He's a self-proclaimed gay rights advocate who nevertheless appealed, over the objections of gay advocates and elected officials, a 2005 lower-court decision allowing same-sex marriage. He's an active courter of Democrats, women, and minorities even as he assiduously raises funds for Republican state senate candidates pushing an anti-choice, anti-schools agenda.

It's entirely possible that the Times poll will turn out to have been a false start, that Thompson will remain a nonentity, unknown by three-quarters of voters. But it's established one thing beyond a doubt: Bloomberg, at 5-foot-7, is too tall to be mayor.

Previously: Tina Brown and CEOs Deep in Denial About the Death of Publishing

Zachary Woolfe grew up on the South Shore of Long Island, tutors Upper East Side high-schoolers by afternoon/early evening, and enjoys opera and himself. He also writes about the U.S. Open for The New York Observer.