So, following up on his announcement yesterday that he is no longer in the Republican party, today the mayor of New York City, Mike Bloomberg, says that he plans to finish his current term of office, which runs through the end of 2009. However, it seems just about certain that his attention-getting dance with the idea of an independent run for president will continue. Why not? It gives him a national platform for his blathering. And someone who can drop 500 million dollars — or more — of his own money to finance a campaign cannot ever be ignored.

This New Yorker has the following to say about a potential President Bloomberg: I’ve never been one to threaten to leave the country if so and so gets elected — since the country is certainly much more than the current occupant of the White House — but, if Bloomberg were elected I would at least consider a hiatus, so long as I could find some sunny Pacific island nation where it’s possible to smoke, own a gun, and cook french fries in the oil of one’s choosing.

Bloomberg has competencies, and has surely been a far better mayor of NYC than the alternatives the Democrats were offering, but he is afflicted with an authoritarian streak of smug nannyism that would be intolerable in a president. He’s also just plain wrong on a number of basic issues.

Of-course, he’s not going to be president — there is virtually no scenario in which he could be elected, no matter how slick his campaign. The question is how he would affect the race. Many are speculating that if he were to run, he would draw more from the Democrat contender than the Republican, due to his very liberal positions on social issues. However, I don’t believe that this can be scientifically determined in advance. It depends on the kind of campaign he would run, and the content of that 500 million dollars’ worth of TV ads. And it also depends on how the other campaigns tackle him. Would he present himself as a super-competent, common-sense and non-partisan doer and fixer of problems? Presumably. Would the criticisms of him as an overreaching, arrogant and highly liberal executive who has no hesitation in strangling people with new laws stick? Of the voters-in-the-middle that he draws, how many would have –when push came to shove — voted for the Republican over the Democrat? It’s all speculative at this point.

Although the local New York papers (even the “conservative” ones) are cheering him on — no doubt due to how much importance and attention would attach to these local outlets in such a scenario — RWB would most definitely prefer not to see Bloomberg run. I prefer a clean contest, and, frankly, I’m sick of super-rich ego maniacs inserting themselves — through sheer force of cash — into the political process. Naturally, it’s their right to spend their money as they see fit, and to take part in politics. The problem, however, is that others do not have the same right, thanks to campaign finance regulations which restrict the size of the donations that individuals can make to their favored candidates. So, the super-rich — spending their own unregulated money on their own campaigns — have a built-in advantage. From Ross Perot to Jon Corzine to John Kerry, we’ve seen the results, and they’ve rarely been pretty (Hillary and Bill look set to benefit from the same factor, by the way, and they’re certainly not pretty either).

Lift all the restrictions on what American citizens can spend or donate to express themselves politically (in keeping with that obscure text known as the First Amendment), and require total and real-time transparency — that’s RWB’s prescription. Then, maybe, people like Mike Bloomberg won’t be in such a great position to turn a presidential race into their own self-glorifying pantomime.

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