If publicity is the currency of our time, running for mayor should raise his personal value substantially (while in the past ten years he's ascended from relative obscurity to business prominence, he is still, in the wider world, not very well known). And if you're as uncharming as Bloomberg, running for office might actually make you seem more charming -- ramp up your Q rating. What's more, by going after the average voter he reaches his real constituency: reporters, celebrities, hostesses, titans of business, customers, possible dates. Running for mayor is an in-crowd play ("The social set in New York has discovered him," Barbara Walters recently told the Times).

Sometimes selling yourself is easier than selling your business. A telling element of the Bloomberg pitch -- I'm a good manager; therefore, I should run the city -- is that the real forum for having your management skills voted on is in the public markets, which he's avoided. Most companies the size of Bloomberg's that don't go public don't because the process would reveal they're not too profitable and not all that well managed, hence depressing their value. But Bloomberg, by running for mayor, a process with fewer disclosure requirements, can trumpet his management prowess -- can go public with it -- without having to prove it. We take his word that he's good at business; in fact, we take his word that he's worth billions.

That's the illusion he's marketing, and, even if we don't vote for him, the one we're buying. Bloomberg isn't running to be mayor; he's running to be some different, enhanced, illusory version of Michael Bloomberg. This is perhaps not so much a fraud as a quest -- an ego in search of something, an ego trying to express itself.

We don't have to worry about Michael Bloomberg becoming mayor.

That's not to say, however, that we don't have to worry about Michael Bloomberg.

E-mail: michael@burnrate.com

Related:

• Archive: “This Media Life”
• Articles by Michael Wolff
• Table of Contents: Aug 27, 2001 issue of New York | Subscribe!