MANHATTAN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the country's "blame culture" and called on people to stand by President Barack Obama in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America Wednesday morning.
“For better or worse, no matter what your political persuasion is, the president is our president. We have to get behind the president,” said Bloomberg. “He is the one that represents the country around the world. And he needs our [support].”
Bloomberg chided the “fundamentally not functioning" government and derided the “growing regulations that change every day," and took aim at "tax policies that nobody can understand," which prevent businesses from planning for the future.
Meanwhile, neither Bloomberg nor Obama's approval ratings are as high as that of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday. In the wake of Albany successfully passing one of the state's only on-time budgets, and garnering enough votes for same-sex marriage, 46 percent of voters said the governor was a better leader than the president, while 51 percent of voters said they preferred Cuomo to Bloomberg.
People polled use words like "honest," "competent" and "effective," to describe Cuomo. "When's the last time you heard voters use those kinds of words to describe a politician?" asked Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
