"The Times hints that Bloomberg may have meant his theological remark as a joke, but even so it reminds us of something about the patrician strain of reform he represents–that we have seen politicians like Bloomberg before. During the nineteenth century, a long string of saintly aristocrats fought to reform the state and also to adjust the habits and culture of working-class people. These two causes were the distinctive obsessions of the wealthy liberals of the day: government must be purified, and working people must learn to behave. They had to be coerced into giving up bad habits. They had to learn the ways of thrift and hard work. There had to be sin taxes. Temperance. Maybe even prohibition."
Thomas Frank in Salon calls Michael Bloomberg a "modern-day Mugwump."
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