Archive for January 3rd, 2008
Go, Mike, Go
He’s against guns! He’s against smoking! He’s against trans fat! He’s competent! He’s a billionaire! Wow, who wouldn’t support Mike Bloomberg for president? Even as cynical a guy as Scott Adams seems to think this would be a good thing:
I’ve often said that a real leader would tackle problems in the order of their logical priority, not the order they appear in NY Times headlines. Bloomberg has gone after smoking in public, and trans fat in restaurants. Smoking and bad diet kill more people than any other cause. That’s a leader.
Of course, this sideways endorsement flies in the face of what we’d come to expect from the creator of Dilbert. That is, an icy, and, yes, cynical, approach that would never support the nanny-state mentality that Mike Bloomberg holds so dear.
And then there’s the idea that Mike Bloomberg is way too smart to ever run for president. For example, from Fox News last June, this from Mayor Mike:
“If everybody in the world was dead and I was the only one alive, yeah, sure,” Bloomberg joked about a 2008 run.
Perhaps there have been some unreported deaths, and all of those worthies sucking up to Iowans this past year or so are the Undead Candidates. Why? Because it looks as though Mayor Mike may have second or third thoughts about running.
From today’s Wall Street Journal, this on a possible third party presidential campaign by Mayor Mike:
The billionaire mayor has no shortage of cheerleaders for such a contest, including his staff, assorted consultants, and even the usually hard-headed editors at the New York Sun and New York Post. He’s rich enough to get on the ballot in every state, and has been widely quoted as saying he’d spend $500 million or more if he did decide to run. That’s more than enough to get his message out, if he can find one.
So far that’s the rub, though presumably the Democrat turned Republican turned Independent would try to position himself as a kind of postpartisan progressive “centrist.” Along those lines, this Sunday the mayor is ostentatiously attending a conference of other self-styled centrists at the University of Oklahoma. Hosted by former Democratic Senator David Boren, the session will include the likes of former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, current Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (who famously predicted the “surge” in Iraq would be a disaster), and others who argue that the main poison in our politics is too much partisanship. With so many voters soured on Washington, there’s a market for this kind of Rodney King can’t-we-all-just-get-along politics.
Got to love that “postpartisan progressive ‘centrist.’” Mayor Mike, besides his fondness for telling the rest of us how to live our lives, apparently has forgotten the small details shown in the WSJ’s graphic.
The fate of third party candidates? A lot of noise and some heat. Very little light. And never, ever, a winner. As the WSJ article claims, the most that might happen is that Mayor Mike would allow the stronger of the two major party candidates to win. I would suggest that Mayor Mike, being a liberal, regardless of what he (or the media) calls himself, would tend to drain more votes away from any of the top three Democratic candidates (Clinton, Edwards, Obama) than from either of the top two Republicans (McCain, Romney).
What about Mayor Mike’s predecessor, Rudy Giuliani? That would be a tougher call, since Rudy is also a social moderate, and a New Yorker. But I’d like to think that voters our there in Big Rectangular State country will know that Rudy is first and foremost a tough leader, whereas Mike is first and foremost a businessman. We need the former much, much more than the latter.
Mike, do everyone a favor and stay home this coming November.
