Six Scenarios
Three months ago, a person who said that Governor Huckabee would win the Iowa caucuses and that after Iowa, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Michigan, Rep. Ron Paul would have twice as many delegates as Mayor Giuliani would have been laughed at, perhaps even institutionalized in some sort of punditry holding pen. It underscores the prevalence of conventional groupthink among the political class, and how wrong such groupthink often is. Better to think outside the box. In that spirit, imagine the possibilities for the next year in American politics.
1) Mr. Huckabee or Senator Thompson break out of the pack and emerge as the Republican nominee, and the Democrats nominate Senator Clinton. Mayor Bloomberg, seeing an opening for a unifying centrist figure, gets into the race with the backing of Senator McCain, Governor Romney, Mayor Giuliani, and Senator Obama.
2) The Republicans end their season of primaries and caucuses without any candidate holding the majority of delegates needed to win the nomination. The candidates cannot agree among themselves on a nominee and, after four ballots, the deadlocked delegates turn to Vice President Cheney as the Republican presidential nominee. Mr. Bloomberg's independent candidacy initially surges, and he leads both Mr. Cheney and Mrs. Clinton in the polls. But his candidacy pops like a balloon when Mr. Cheney outperforms him in the televised debates on tax and foreign policy issues.
3) Mr. Bloomberg, realizing he will need Southern conservative states to win an electoral vote majority and prevent the election from being tossed into the House of Representatives, chooses as his running mate the former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, whose Web site Newt.org is now — really — touting "an agenda of truly 'tripartisan' issues — goals for America that have the support of majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents," including a dramatic increase in spending on math and science education, tax credits for alternative energy, and an increase in legal immigration for skilled workers. Mr. Gingrich's "American Solutions" 527 group Web site says, "The American people are tired of Red vs. Blue partisan bickering and want to create a Red, White, and Blue country. American Solutions is designed to rise above traditional gridlocked partisanship, to provide real, significant solutions to the most important issues facing our country." Sound like Mr. Bloomberg? They win an electoral vote majority.
4) Democrats, when neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Obama can win enough delegates to secure the nomination, turn to Mr. Bloomberg as their candidate at the convention. After reregistering as a Democrat, he defeats Mr. Huckabee or Mr. Thompson and wins the presidency.
5) An independent candidacy by Mr. Bloomberg wins a plurality of the popular vote and a plurality of the electoral vote in November against Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Huckabee, throwing the election into the House of Representatives, where, voting by state, the Democratic delegations install Senator Clinton in the White House. She is an unpopular one-term president, with many Americans unwilling to accept her legitimacy in office, much as many Americans felt that President Bush stole the 2000 election from Vice President Gore with the help of the Supreme Court and Katherine Harris.
6) Senator McCain wins the Republican nomination and chooses Mr. Bloomberg as his vice presidential pick, saving Mr. McCain from the chore of fundraising, which he detests, and allowing the McCain-Bloomberg ticket to attack their Democratic rival, Mrs. Clinton, for each and every suspicious campaign contribution she accepts. The outcome of the election depends on a Supreme Court review of a Federal Election Commission ruling on the murky question of whether a vice presidential nominee can spend unlimited amounts of his personal fortune on behalf of his own ticket.
We're not predicting any of these scenarios will come to fruition; certainly they are long shots. But neither are they impossible. And if they seem totally unlikely — well, just think how unlikely it seemed three months ago that a guitar-plucking ex-minister from the same hometown as Bill Clinton would still be in the race and that Mr. Paul would be outpolling Mr. Giuliani, who started out as the front-runner.
