Weigel

I'm stationed at the annual, Atlantic-run conference at the Newseum, which I can neither confirm nor deny is actually part of David Bradley's quest to find the idea he loved and lost as a child.

The first speaker, Mike Bloomberg, took a bulldozer approach to questions from Chris Wallace as Fox News. On immigration: "It doesn't matter until we have comprehensive immigration reform, so it's not worth talking about." On the defeat of moderates in primaries, he suggested that voters would keep ousting incumbents, regardless of ideology, because they didn't get things done. What should they get done? What smart people wanted, basically.

"We turn over much too much to the Congress in terms of writing legislation," said Bloomberg, in one of the least Tea Party-ish moments I have experienced this year. "The executive should take a bigger role." A big problem with the stimulus package, he said, was that Congress was given so much leeway to put it together. He implicitly dismissed the structural complaints about government that come from the Tea Party: "The Tea Party is a euphemism for dissatisfaction."

Bloomberg spoke with the confidence of a billionaire who doesn't have to worry about running for anything ever again.

"Why not run for president?" asked Wallace.

"Can't win," said Bloomberg. The reason? "When you're mayor, you make decisions and you alienate the people who don't like those decisions."