Breaking Down the Game Plan
City Hall News’ Edward-Isaac Dovere has seemingly broken into Kevin Sheekey’s “Mike for President” hidden bunker and stolen the game plan for which Michael Bloomberg will run for President in 2008. He makes many good points that are worth mentioning, especially to those who cannot yet justify reading a sixteen page article about a man running for an office he has said he does not want a thousand times, so I have outlined a few here.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has addressed and has an articulate stance “education, guns, immigration, fiscal policy, environmental sustainability and to an extent, homeland security.” All of these are crucial to the 2008 election. Dovere points out that Mayor Bloomberg has not really given a coherent answer on the war in Iraq except for more international involvement. For now that answer is fine, Mayor Bloomberg is just a Mayor and not officially running for anything. It would be out of place for him to challenge such a broad national issue to which he does not have a lot of say. Make no mistake however; Michael Bloomberg did not create his empire by being unprepared. While his public views on Iraq have been unquotable at best, you had better believe he has briefing book upon briefing book in that bullpen of his on the issue and when the time comes to have a concrete and nuanced position on the war he will have one ready to go.
The single largest obstacle to an Independent Presidential candidacy is to get on the ballot in all 50 states. For a Mike Bloomberg run this is nothing but a formality. Unity08, an organization committed to having an Independent ticket on the ballot in 2008 will have already taken care of most of the ground work and if Bloomberg decides to get into the race, his money will put there cause over the top. Unity08’ is a worthy grassroots cause but they probably will not have the resources to finance and field just any candidate, for them to be successful it’s Mike Bloomberg for President or Bust.
Mayor Bloomberg says that he wants to devote his post-mayoral career to philanthropy and aiding worthy causes and giving back. I believe him when he says this. Giving to Johns Hopkins and the Met is nice but how about helping out the 45 million plus people in this country that do not have health insurance? What about providing better education to our countries youth? What about a comprehensive plan for environmental sustainability at the dawn of the 21st century? If Mayor Bloomberg really wants to focus on helping people in his next career 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be a better headquarters for those efforts then the mansion he just bought on 79th and 5th and he knows that too.
If he’s in it, he’s in it to win, he expects too much from himself and the people around him to expect anything less then first. Ross Perot, the last legitimate Independent candidate got into the race in February of 1992 and spent the next 5 months blanketing the nation with advertising. By June he was in the lead with 39 percent, compared to then President George H.W. Bush with 31% and Arkansas Governor William Clinton with 25%. While it turned out Perot was not cut from Presidential cloth he still got 20% of the popular vote from a constituency that covered the spectrum of political ideology and demographics. Candidate Bloomberg would surly not make the same mistakes. Perot was a novice politician who never ran for anything. Bloomberg has been through two mayoral elections and saw his approval rating, once in the 30’s, now consistently in the 70’s and is dubbed by some the best Mayor of New York has ever had. He’ll learn from Perot and do it twice as well. If that holds true he would get 40% of the popular vote and probably be our next president.
The bottom line is that if Mayor Bloomberg decides the best way he can help people is to be President he is going to be on the ballot and he is going to be a legitimate contender. Then it will be three candidates on a stage vying for the vote of the American people, and I think that’s all we can really ask for. Game plans are useful and provide a good ground work going forward but in Presidential campaigns they are rewritten by the six o’clock news. I encourage every one to read the full article.
It seems so simple on paper yet infinitely more difficult to execute. Take a look at any of the current candidate’s game plans and you might not find Mayor Bloomberg anywhere. But come February of 2008, those game plans may well be useless.