solve for X

[calimac]

Here is a quotation from a book I've been reading, about world leaders, with the names removed. Your riddle is, who is X?

A lamented that 'X is behaving just like a spoilt child, and it is difficult to know how to deal with him'; as B had warned, the more X asked for, the more he got, and the greater became his demands. He was not a spoilt child, merely an avaricious and now overweeningly self-confident and cynical brigand.

Sound like anybody we know?

Comments

[ethelmay]

My first guess was right, but my second guess (for a historical figure, I mean) I suspect would have been most people's first.

[calimac]

I think the correct answer fits the data better than the most obvious answer, for phrases like "spoilt child" and "cynical brigand." Most-obvious is more likely to come to mind for endlessly increasing demands, but the other phrases wouldn't apply to him as they would to the correct answer.