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Views > February 15, 2008 > Web Only

The Candidate of the Permanent Will

By David Sirota

To the consternation of news bureaus, political consulting firms and has-been politicians, the Wall Street Journal’s poll last month shows that America is hostile to an independent presidential candidacy by Michael Bloomberg. The New York mayor is viewed more unfavorably than favorably by voters. In head-to-head general election polls, he gets crushed everywhere, losing even the city he now governs.

Yet, despite the unprecedented enthusiasm for the major parties’ 2008 presidential contenders, the media and political gatekeepers keep floating the possibility of Bloomberg’s candidacy, showing just how much change frightens the status quo.

To review: Bloomberg is the billionaire who spent roughly the same amount to buy New York’s mayoralty as Bill Clinton spent on his entire national presidential campaign in 1992. By most measures, he is the antithesis of what Americans want in a president.

He is a CEO at a time when his own Bloomberg News polls show Americans overwhelmingly distrust CEOs. He heads a media conglomerate and is considering an independent presidential candidacy in an era when Gallup surveys show voters strongly distrust media companies and are satisfied with the current field of major-party candidates.

Bloomberg is an icon of Manhattan’s effete aristocracy in an election pivoting on working-class voters in Ohio and the Mountain West. He is the caretaker mayor of a city that is an embarrassing spectacle of economic inequality — at a moment when Americans are worried about inequality.

Even on foreign policy he is out of step. With the public outraged at the Iraq War, Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald has documented Bloomberg’s pro-war extremism echoing right-wing attempts to dishonestly connect 9/11 to the conflict; telling America to support President Bush because of the war; and offering a post-“Mission Accomplished” parade for the president.

Bloomberg is positioning himself as an issues-based alternative to both parties’ aspiring nominees. Yet his confidante admits the Bloomberg candidacy would be a Seinfeldian display of arrogance: a campaign about nothing, other than one egomaniac’s self-importance. “It isn’t about which candidate Mike could live with,” the Bloomberg friend recently told New York magazine. “All Mike cares about is whether he can win or not.”

Regardless, the portrayal of Bloomberg as Principled Savior continues. Late last year, Newsweek’s editor penned a brown-nosing front-cover love letter to the mayor, lauding his “American odyssey.” In January, Doug Schoen, a Bloomberg pollster, popped up in articles pushing the Bloomberg candidacy. Just weeks ago, a group of retired lawmakers trumpeted a Bloomberg run.

Some of the motives are obvious. Washed-up politicians are looking for White House jobs. News executives and political consultants see dollar signs in potential Bloomberg for President ads. Reporters would like to ingratiate themselves to the head of a burgeoning media empire. Power-worshiping pundits see in Bloomberg a fellow upper-cruster they can relate to at social gatherings.

But this is about more than just Cabinet slots, cash, careerism and cocktail parties.

In years past, campaign contributors controlled figurehead candidates like Bush, and corporate front groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council pummeled threatening challengers like Howard Dean. These were reliable instruments of corruption that enforced what Alexander Hamilton once called the Establishment’s “permanent will.” Now, though, voters are forcing both parties to ignore that “permanent will” and embrace real, unbridled change.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the ascendance of Republican John McCain, a sometime opponent of corporate America, is downright “nerve-wracking” for insiders already “jarred by intensifying populist attacks from the Democratic field.” Barack Obama (D) is now hammering away at lobbyist-written trade deals that help companies outsource jobs, and even Hillary Clinton (D) — the candidate who has taken the most cash from the health care industry — is criticizing health insurance profiteering.

Thus, the elite are desperate for a stooge, and in Bloomberg, they’ve found one. Politically repugnant to most Americans and representing no mass constituency whatsoever, his wallet nonetheless imparts “legitimacy,” and his corporate career ensures a candidacy working to suppress the change impulse under meaningless bromides about “bipartisanship.”

Bloomberg’s machinations will be the subject of ongoing media speculation. However, the real story is not about one prima donna, but about the entrenched interests pushing him to run in the first place. Whether this billionaire becomes a candidate or not, you can bet those interests will keep working hard to trip up change on its way to the White House.

David Sirota is a senior editor at In These Times and a bestselling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," was released in May 2008. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network -- both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

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  • Reader Comments

    At least this put down of candidates other than Barack Obama is labeled as a viewpoint instead of masquerading as a news story. It should carry a disclaimer, however, because this opinion piece could have been taken directly from an Obama campaign play book.

    Posted by SillyLeftist on Feb 16, 2008 at 3:46 AM

    Well, I think the story is about “one prima donna” and he is not Bloomberg. His avid fans care not a whit that he has no accomplishments or experience to speak of. He has a questionable past as a state legislator. He has unsavory benefactors, one of which has been arrested. He is generous to his benefactors, for example, he steered 14 million dollars to the unfortunate benefactor who sits in jail today. Pooh, pooh, who cares. Like the Texas congressman when asked by Chris Matthews to list one accomplishment he could only say that he gives great speeches. Oh, but when he doesn’t read them from a teleprompter, ala George Bush, he just rambles on and on and on and does not say anything really. Oh, well, he sounds so good and we all want to be progressives, don’t we, and what better way than to vote a smooth talking black man.

    Posted by mayone on Feb 20, 2008 at 6:16 AM

    Write on, David. Your considereable involvement with Ned Lamont’s campaign should have well acquainted you with what once was called “Radical Chic” in NYC and has now become Practical Slick. I’d suggest some effort at substantiating a Bloomberg-Lieberman link with Israeli liquidity might prove cogent. Then again, such notions are now considered anti-Semitic, no? Perhaps the most glaring truth of the past 25 year of our nation’s politics is that high office can now be bought because, to paraphrase, it’s the television, stupid. Maybe Ned can assit you in getting to the source of those who think Bloomberg’s candidacy would prove a potent spoiler to a Democratic victory. That is, unless Ned’s going after Lieberman has cost him entree to those haunts of Mammon which you so eloquently lambaste with this piece. At the very least, I’m sure Ned’s invites to mitzvahs have declined. Where, of where, is that Jewish intelligentsia that gave the world its most progressive thought advanced by the thinker whose name marks capital’s corruptions? Is there nothing left of Leonard Bernstein’s chutzpah?

    Posted by Bud Wizer on Feb 20, 2008 at 6:34 AM

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