On Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will sit down for an undefined meeting at the University of Oklahoma, apparently as the precursor to a presidential campaign. Bloomberg will be joined by a bipartisan group of former (and a couple of current) elected officials, including Dems such as former senators Sam Nunn (Ga.), Charles S. Robb (Va.), David Boren (Okla.), and Gary Hart (Colo.). Republicans will include Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), former party chairman Bill Brock, former senator John Danforth (Mo.) and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.
What’s less clear, exactly, is the point. As of last week, Bloomberg’s group insisted that they’d move forward with plans of a third-party presidential campaign unless Democrats and Republicans “refocus” their campaigns” on “a bipartisan approach.” Approach to what? They didn’t say. All we could get out of them was their stated desire to see the major parties “formally embrace bipartisanship.”
At least, that was the first demand. This week, Iowans threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the Bloomberg plan by backing two candidates who talk constantly about “bringing people together,” and rejecting the parties’ establishment. Barack Obama, like John Edwards and Bill Richardson, has even talked about having Republicans in his cabinet. It should be music to the ears of Bloomberg and his cohorts.
Apparently, though, it’s not. Now that the parties are talking more and more about bipartisanship, Bloomberg has decided he has a new complaint.
[I]n a morning radio call-in program, Mr. Bloomberg continued to assert that the leading candidates for president had failed to be specific enough in their proposed solutions for the nation’s problems. He also discussed a University of Oklahoma conference he plans to attend this weekend, at which participants expect to call for the candidates to renounce what the mayor called “partisan bickering.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but this little endeavor seems to be getting more annoying as time goes on.
Candidates are supposed to “renounce” bickering? What is this, fourth grade?
What’s more, this notion that the candidates haven’t been “specific enough” is foolish for two reasons. First, at least on the Democratic side, the candidates have been extremely specific about policy matters, issuing white papers and posting detailed proposals on their websites.
Second, hearing Bloomberg complain about specificity in the presidential campaign is quite ironic. His little group that’s getting together has offered “specific” concerns that they want candidates to emphasize, such as “rebuild and reconfigure our military forces.”
The bottom line is that Bloomberg and his partners don’t seem to have a coherent vision for anything, except bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. If they have constructive policy ideas, terrific; they should certainly be encouraged to be part of the public debate.
But that’s not what we’re seeing here. It’s a pointless exercise that’s had two rationales in as many weeks.
Greg Sargent makes a very good case that it’s time to stop giving Bloomberg the attention he craves.
Look, at a certain point, we should start asking ourselves whether this stunt deserves any more attention. Many of the major candidates are offering detailed solutions to the country’s problems. When Bloomberg falsely says none of them are, he’s just playing a different rendition of the same tired old tune that has it that only a “nonpartisan” leader can solve our problems. The idea is that there’s no way any of the ideas harbored by these candidates can be any good, since they all belong to the major political parties, which we already know are the cause of all our problems because David Broder and Mike Bloomberg told us so.
Really, until Bloomberg declares that he’s running for president, and until his criticism has genuine specificity, what he has to say about the presidential hopefuls just isn’t news anymore.
Quite right. Maybe if Bloomberg and his friends have something constructive say, they can get back to the rest of us. Until then, this whole endeavor has the look and feel of a sideshow.