Bloomberg's Run

The impending presidential candidacy of Michael Bloomberg at first seems odd. Consider the frontrunners of either established party: Hillary Clinton, a moderate New York senator; Rudy Giuliani, a moderate former New York mayor. Is there really room or need for another moderate New York mayor? How does it improve the voters’ choice, either ideologically or geographically?

And yet… it seems more and more likely, as I have long thought, that Hillary Clinton is not going to win her party’s nomination. In the very long presidential race, she has already grown stale. Democrats get bored quickly, and almost always kill off the front runner. I thought originally that John Edwards would be the beneficiary of this, but I was not reckoning on the shortened primary season. We now have something like a national primary. This will favour established names and candidates with charisma on camera. Edwards’great strength in the past has been retail politics—the same speech before many small audiences. This tilts the game to Obama.

On the Republican side, the long season may hurt Giuliani, and help Fred Thompson. Thompson will be strong, with his media savvy, in a big nationwide primary. The Republicans rarely coalesce around a moderate; they usually nominate someone running toward the right in his own party. I’d give either of them even money at this point.

So perhaps the likelier matchup is Fred Thompson, Barack Obama, and Michael Bloomberg.

And this lineup does give Bloomberg some scope.