A Republican, a Democrat, and a Jew walk into a bar…
“Well I believe I’ll vote for a third party candidate.” - Voter
“Go ahead, throw your vote away!” - Kang
This wasn’t the topic I had planned for today, but I thought I’d try my hand at a little instant analysis. Yesterday New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared himself an independent, ditching the Republican affiliation that got him his current job, for which he ditched a previous Democratic affiliation. He is, all together now, “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” and he just might be running for president.
The Democrats won’t have him, not after he rolled out the red carpet for the Republican convention the last go round. The Republican nomination might be within reach, but it’s a stretch. Sure he’s divorced and in favor of all those nasty things like gay rights and abortion but, but if his predecessor can be considered one of the major candidates, why couldn’t he? I suppose there just isn’t enough room for two mayors. That leaves us with what is already being speculated about: the dreaded independent/third party candidacy.
Bloomberg isn’t stupid. He is certainly aware of the dismal history of third party and independent presidential bids. But he isn’t just a rich guy who thinks he’d make a good president. He has held elective office, as an executive not merely a legislator.[1] Could he be Henry Ross Perot without the crazy aphorisms? Perot did win 19% of the vote even after dropping out, getting back in and then finding a running mate who made Dan Quayle look good by comparison.[2] It can’t be that hard to avoid those types of mistakes.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that he made this announcement now to get it out of the way. It ratchets up his press coverage a tad and allows him to bide his time while making as much hay as he can out of being the independent mayor of New York City. His odds of winning without a major party behind him are completely dependent on the nominees of the major parties; in the meantime he can sit back and watch the primary campaigns. He’s rich enough to throw his hat into the ring at any time if a favorable situation develops; if one doesn’t, he can go on being mayor and then decide what to do with the rest of his life from there. He’s got nothing to lose by ditching the Republican tag now.
In about nine months we ought to have both nominees pretty well figured out (if Bloomberg is lucky both nominations will be slogs). That’s when I’d make my move if I were him. Both nominees will be fresh off months of overacting for their respective bases and he could stake out a big chunk of the center while the other two are at their most liberal and conservative.[3] His chance to win is right through the middle. “Rudy Giuliani vs Hillary Clinton” would be ideal for him, but something like “John McCain vs John Edwards” could work as well. In either of those scenarios (plus quite a few more) there would be an enormous gap between the two nominees and Bloomberg could make a push as a viable alternative.
That’s a workable plan, and it’s probably the best shot an independent/third party candidate has had in a long time. It’s at least as good a situation as Perot had, maybe better. He’s got the money, and he’d be running in a year when a good number of people are fed up with both parties (but when isn’t that the case, eh?). Bloomberg/Somebody ‘08 would need to catch a few breaks, but every campaign needs some luck. He wouldn’t make a bad president either, he might not be a great one, but I don’t think he’d be a bad one. Ah well, it’s almost certain that none of this will matter, but hey, it’s fun to speculate and that’s what it looks like to me on a first pass. If nothing else, we ought to get a John Anderson sighting out of all this.
[1] New York City would be the twelfth largest state by population, right between North Carolina and Virginia.
[2] Stockdale earned a truly unfair reputation from that 1992 fiasco. He was a smart, decent guy who had never been in anything like that kind of a spotlight before. I doubt you could hang an entire doctoral dissertation on it, but rehabilitating Admiral Stockdale would be a great counter-intuitive term paper for an undergraduate political science class.
[3] Not to mention he might be able to pick up the remnants of some losing candidates’ state campaign infrastructures.
