Waiting for Bloomberg

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Mayor Bloomberg has been back and forth between Washington and New York so frequently lately that he might want to think about applying for a second job as a flight attendant on the Delta Shuttle. On February 28, he was there calling for more federal housing funding. On March 7, he met with Senator Leahy and Rep. Bill Thomas about eminent domain. On March 28, he testified before a congressional subcommittee on gun control legislation. On April 29, he attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner for the first time since being elected mayor, prompting the editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, to tell our A.L. Gordon, “He’s testing the waters for a presidential campaign.” And yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg was back in Washington again, working the gun control issue, for his fifth visit to our nation’s capital in 12 weeks.

Since our editorial of February 8, “Bloomberg for President,” there’s been a cottage industry of speculation about the possibility of a Bloomberg presidential run. The New York Observer ran a February 20 page one article headlined “Will Mike Run For President as Sane Perot?” New York magazine ran an April 24 cover story proposing a “Purple Party,” with an article reporting that the mayor’s top political aide, Kevin Sheekey, “is a true believer in the plausibility – and the benefits – of a President Bloomberg.”

Ms. Gordon’s May 1 column on the White House Correspondents dinner, which threw the presidential speculation into sharp relief, prompted an interesting reply from the mayor’s lady friend, Diana Taylor, who asked us, referring to the mayor’s frequent statements denying his interest in the presidency, “Don’t you guys understand the word ‘no’?” When our A.L. Gordon replied that there seemed to be a lot of people who wanted the mayor to run, Ms. Taylor allowed as how the person she’d been sitting next to had also been urging a Bloomberg presidency. I guess it’s flattering, Ms. Taylor mused, that he’s doing such a good job.

If Mr. Bloomberg really wanted the speculation to cease, he could stop traveling to Washington every other week, quit speaking out on national issues, and tell Mr. Sheekey to stop talking to reporters about what a great president Mr. Bloomberg would be. But the mayor hasn’t done that. His second term mayoral agenda has been increasingly devoted to issues that are national in scope, from gun violence to electronic medical records and campaigns against smoking and diabetes. Mr. Bloomberg is a smart man, and at some point he is going to realize that shuttle diplomacy can only go so far on those issues. What he can accomplish is limited by the failure to achieve the kind of national consensus or mandate that only a presidential campaign can create.

We don’t agree with Mr. Bloomberg on every issue, and there are plenty of other strong potential contenders waiting in the wings for 2008, not least the man whose endorsement probably got Mr. Bloomberg elected in the first place, Rudolph Giuliani. But anyone in Washington five times in 12 weeks should start thinking about finding a longer-term place to stay down there. If Mr. Bloomberg believes that what’s going on in Washington deserves such a large share of his attention, the logical move is not for him to hang back and issue denials of his interest, but to begin exploring openly the possibility of a candidacy for the presidency.


The New York Sun

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