2008: Bloomberg's not-so-independent run

Bloomberg Moves Closer to Running for President
(Headline, The New York Times, 2007-12-31)

You gotta love it. First Mike Bloomberg was going to run an independent candidacy for president if the Democratic and Republican nominees had "high negatives," i.e., when the conventional wisdom was that it would be Clinton vs Giuliani. Now he's going to jump in if the nominees are "poles apart," i.e., now that it looks like Huckabee vs Edwards or Obama.

So it's safe to say, he wants to run, and he'll find a reason.

The thing is, though, a campaign against Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani made some sense; they are divisive figures with stratospheric negatives. An independent candidate in that situation might hope to be more than a spoiler, as Ross Perot was for George H.W. Bush in 1992.

On the other hand, in many ways Mike Huckabee and John Edwards aren't poles apart, aside from that 40-point IQ spread: for example, both have made ending poverty central to their campaigns, and each inclines naturally to positive campaigning. Both are well-liked, and it is difficult to imagine an independent succeeding against attractive red and/or blue party candidates, as Ross Perot found out when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1992.

Plus, Barack Obama is a bigger conciliator and compromiser than Bloomberg will ever dream of being, so why oppose him?

Anyway, it looks like the Establishment that was displaced by the Bush radicals intends to use Bloomberg to restore the ancien régime (see below, A disempowered Establishment makes its move).

So much for the principled moderate.