Autumn of the Moguls by Michael Wolff

Author:Michael Wolff [Wolff, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Religious, Business & Economics, Industries, Media & Communications
ISBN: 9780007395651
Google: cYIH7x_W0eAC
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

But then he won, surprising nobody as much as himself. And confusing everyone else.

Bloomberg as mayor is so odd—not necessarily unattractive, just without precedent—that you look at him and find yourself thinking, especially if you’re in the media business, especially if you’re a mogul or would-be mogul type. What does this mean? What does Michael Bloomberg signify?

It’s a paradigm shift.

We haven’t ever elected men who’ve made a ton of money—not megamoney, not robber-baron money. Even in a nation where “self-made” is the greatest title, there have always been those few who are so self-made, so singular, that we haven’t considered them to be part of the same striving experience. We haven’t, at least in the past, liked people to be that unique—that independent.

Who would trust such men? That kind of money—unlimited, unimaginable amounts of it—naturally breaks the popular connection (and who does not hold the Capra-esque belief that such men are the poorer for it?).

That a great crime lies behind every great fortune has been a basic American sentiment. Where there’s great profit, somewhere else there’s been great loss. (You were a financier who’d stolen money from widows or orphans, an industrialist who’d made it off other men’s labor, or a monopolist who had bought off politicians—or all three.) Such men had made their deal with the devil. The more money they made, the dirtier their business—hence “filthy” rich. They had blood on their hands. They were capable of anything (out of such omnipotence, conspiracy theories were born).

Their all-powerfulness (they would certainly have been as insulated and as pampered and as fawned over and as flattered as any aristocrat ever was) necessarily made them undemocratic, to say the least. And autocratic and authoritarian. Chosen. God, J. D. Rockefeller said about his money, had given it to him.

On the occasions when we elected their children to high office, it was because they’d made a public break with business, with the act of making money. Public life was an act of contrition. To whom much is given, much is required, the Kennedy and Rockefeller heirs went around saying.

But now the bar against electing outlandish, unimaginable, otherworldly wealth has been lifted. In fact, staggering sums of money, and the freedom and power (not to mention lifestyle) such sums give you, become a political virtue.

In the past, rich men or the heirs of rich men have run or flirted with running, but, in the manner of rich men, have often turned cheap in the process. Even old Joe Kennedy once said he didn’t want to pay for one more vote than he had to. That is not the spirit now. Not only is the calculation different, but the act of spending, of being able to outspend what has been spent before and to inflate the underlying cost of the entire process, is a kind of demonstration of your willingness to give it your all. Cheapness is not a political virtue.

Obviously, this new tolerance and admiration for the superrich has to do with the ethos of the time.

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