Bloomberg for President? - Third Party Posture

Here's an OpEd to make you nervous. At least those that are strongly pro-gun rights.

Democrats and Republicans here are taking seriously talk that Mayor Michael Bloomberg will run as an independent for president in 2008. One source close to Mr. Bloomberg predicts he will dispose of his multibillion-dollar business holdings next year, give much of it away to charity, and use some of the remainder for a high-stakes presidential campaign.

At a dinner party I attended last month, much of the talk was about whether the mayor might run. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, noted that the people around Mr. Bloomberg were clearly making noises about the possibility. Another leading Democrat, who is close to Sen. Hillary Clinton, opined that a Bloomberg candidacy would wind up hurting her general-election chances. A Republican broke in to disagree, noting that should the GOP nominate a highly conservative candidate in 2008, Mr. Bloomberg could snap up votes from middle-of-the-roaders in both parties attracted to his technocratic style.

But could a Bloomberg candidacy actually succeed? Certainly, dissatisfaction with both major parties is high, with large numbers of Americans viewing Republicans as unprincipled and less than competent and Democrats as feckless and unserious. Similar conditions gave rise to Ross Perot in 1992, and for a while the diminutive Texas billionaire was running first in the polls. He eventually won 19% of the national vote and helped Bill Clinton defeat the first President Bush.

The frightening thing is that Bloomberg in a third party and centrist position would likely have quite a good chance of winning. I think much of the editorial points to good reasons. He's essentially a republican centrist from a liberal city/state. He'd be a spoiler for the party machines.

I personally don't like him. First for his gun control buffoonery and then there is the fiscal liberalism:

His record is liberal on fiscal issues too. He raised taxes during his first term and now appears to be on the verge of capitulating to the city's public-sector unions in contract talks. On Saturday the New York Times reported that he has settled for a 10% wage hike over the next 32 months in talks that include no concessions from the union on work rules. "Should Bloomberg cave [in] to one union, the pressure on him to give in to all the others will be immense," says Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute. Bowing to the union machine wouldn't exactly represent the kind of profile in courage that voters in heartland states might appreciate.

That type of attitude in the national government will be devastating. I don't know if he could change his stripes, but I am of the opinion that we really need a president with some serious fiscal control. (Not to mention a congress with some control.)

They also make an interesting point about the effects of the electoral college if a third party candidate split the vote so that no majority could be had.

In the end, all this speculation may not pan out. Mr. Bloomberg knows that the odds are against him: No modern third-party candidate has come close to winning, and even if one managed to poll close to 40% of the popular vote, it would be hard to carry a majority of the Electoral College. In the absence of an Electoral College majority--something that hasn't happened since 1824--the next president is selected by a vote in the House, with each state's delegations casting one vote and a majority needed to prevail. Given that almost every House member is a Democrat or Republican (Vermont's Bernie Sanders is an independent, but he's leaving to run for the Senate), an independent's chances of victory there are slim.

At the height of Perotmania in 1992, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call surveyed 301 House members as to how they would vote for president in the absence of an Electoral College majority. Two-thirds said they were uncommitted; the vast majority of the remainder indicated they would either vote the same way as their congressional district or would vote for their party's nominee. "The clear upshot was that Perot was going to have a tough time winning in a two-party dominated House," recalls Jim Glassman, publisher of Roll Call at the time. The same would likely be true of Mr. Bloomberg should he run.

That should make a lot of people nervous about this election year.