Henry J. Stern
June 20, 2007

Mayor Bloomberg has dropped the first shoe.  We will have to wait a while for the second to fall, if it does.
 
His departure from the Republican Party came for the same reason as his enrollment in the GOP in 2001: political convenience. He rented a political party, the way one might rent chairs for a wedding.  He paid his dues and helped many other Republicans.  Now his business (soliciting national support) needs more space, so he is moving on to ‘unaffiliated’. 

Political parties today are like national flags for ships. The owners of large vessels fly the flag of whichever country has the loosest inspection laws and the lowest taxes, e.g. Liberia or Panama.
 
For years Bloomberg had been denounced by conservative Republicans as a RINO (Republican in name only).  They use that acronym to tar relatively liberal Republicans.  Today there is one fewer RINO, but fortunately they are not becoming extinct. They will continue to thrive wherever moderation is required to win an election.

It all depends on what you believe to be the primary purpose of political parties.   Some people in politics believe and act on the premise that their mission is to control the machinery of a political party in order to require ideological conformity from their nominees for public office.  Pragmatists believe that the purpose of political parties is to win elections, within a broader philosophical framework. 

Usually in these contests, which occur in many states, the wealthier or more numerous side wins, with results varying from year to year and place to place.  In the end, the appetite for victory, for patronage and pelf, even for a chance to put principles into practice, usually overcomes the fundamentalists.
 
Bloomberg timed his disaffiliation with characteristic professionalism.  It was  announced in a statement released while he was in California.   He chose the week after he shared the cover of Time magazine with his west coast counterpart, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governator has a reputation for independence and distaste for bureaucracy, even though he presides over a state with 1.7 million public employees, including my nephew, a firefighter.  New York State has 1.5 million public employees and more per capita than California.   To their credit, their Medicaid spending is much lower than ours.

The bicoastal duo riff off each other, the governor of the most populous state and the mayor of the most populous city in the United States. They both are highly unlikely to become President, one because he was born in Austria (after World War II), and the Constitution would have to be amended to allow him to run, and the other, born in Massachusetts during the war, because he is a self-described “five foot seven, divorced Jewish billionaire from New York.”

There is one line in the Constitution, however, that says Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot be Vice President, even without the right of succession; it is the last line of Amendment XII, ratified in 1804: “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” 

The next in line for the White House after the Vice President used to be the Secretary of State, but the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (passed by the Republican 80th Congress ) inserted the speaker of the house and the president pro tem of the senate as Nos. 3 and 4, taking precedence over the cabinet members. 

In any event Schwarzenegger now holds a more demanding job than that of Vice President.  The last Governor of California to run for President, Ronald Reagan, was elected in 1980.  The last Californian to run for Vice President, Senator Richard M. Nixon, was elected in 1952 and re-elected in 1956. Before that, Governor Earl Warren was defeated for Vice President in 1948, along with New York State's governor, Thomas E. Dewey, who was declared elected by the Chicago Daily Tribune but defeated at the polls by Harry Truman.
 
John Nance Garner of Texas, vice president for the first two terms of FDR’s presidency  (under a deal in which the Texas delegation voted for Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in 1932) is widely supposed to have said "The Vice Presidency is not a worth a pitcher of warm spit."  Dissenting historians dispute the precise language, although not the substance, of the quotation; incidentally the only one that has survived Garner’s eight years in office.  These authorities say that 'spit' is a bowdlerization of a word for another body fluid, produced in larger quantities than saliva and therefore more likely to fill a pitcher.  It’s not blood.
 
Back to Bloomberg: The Giuliani people are said to be outraged because Giuliani's help was indispensable in making Bloomberg mayor in 2001.  Mayor Koch's endorsement was extremely valuable in electing Giuliani mayor in 1993, but their relationship deteriorated and Koch later wrote a small book denouncing his successor.  The relationship between the two former Republican mayors, Giuliani and Bloomberg, has been more cordial, certainly less publicly hostile, but they differ ideologically (Bloomberg is to the left) and neither has any feeling of obligation to the other. 

Relevant rules: Of shifting relationships, which may even end in murder, we cite Meyer Lansky's Rule 29-B: "This is the business we have chosen."

A gentler thought is expressed in Rule 35: Senator Robert F. Wagner (1877-1953) had an axiom, which he passed down orally to his son, Mayor Wagner, who related to his son, Deputy Mayor Wagner, who told it to me. "Gratitude is for favors yet to be received."

 The ethic of appreciation was discussed at length by Warren Moscow, former New York Times political reporter and press secretary to Mayor Wagner.  "What Have You Done For Me Lately?", Rule 26-W, is Moscow's book on New York City politics, published in 1967 by Prentice-Hall.
 
Back to the Future:  We predict that Mayor Bloomberg will NOT run for President unless the stars are in total alignment.  If the Democratic nominee is John Edwards and the Republican is Fred Thompson, an independent Bloomberg candidacy would be a more likely scenario.   If the Democrat were Hillary Clinton and the Republican Rudy Giuliani, that would be the least likely circumstance for Bloomberg to run. 

An all-New York presidential election would have the appeal of a subway series, which we have not had since 2000 and are unlikely to see this year. On the other hand, such a race would leave some 3,688,000 square miles of the United States as fertile ground for a candidate west of the Hudson or east of the East.
 
However, the likelihood of Mayor Mike being a serious candidate for President is greater than the likelihood of his being a serious candidate for Mayor nine years ago, when his efforts began. And the future depends on events that have not yet taken place, such as the outcome of the war in Iraq, the response (if any) to Iran's nuclear ambitions, the rise or fall of the budget and the deficit, and scandal abroad or at home.

The Mayor's public image will sharpen and his base may narrow as he takes positions on controversial issues.  Ideologically, he is a Democrat, with a few radical notions which are shared  by the Manhattan elite.  He has less guilt about his wealth than people who inherited or married theirs.  At heart, he is probably a moderate redistributionist. 

Yet Bloomberg is more sensible and pragmatic than his peers, and he has learned a great deal about government in his five and a half years as mayor.  He could end up as the best of the major candidates.  For now, he is doing the right thing by avoiding the appearance of ambition, while allowing his aides to advance him assiduously.
 
A realistic analysis of Bloomberg's policy positions by Michael Goodwin appears in today's News. There are complementary complimentary editorials in the News and the Post.  The Sun’s  editorial is relatively enthusiastic about Bloomberg's candidacy, although several years ago he and the editors had low regard for each other.  The Sun was the first paper to suggest him for the presidency in an editorial on February 8, 2006.  My first column raising the issue of his Presidential candidacy appeared ten months ago, on August 18, 2006.  As is often the case, the mainstream media are catching up.

Part of the excitement of this state of affairs is that someone many New Yorkers actually know as a person is running for President of the United States.  The fact that three people many of us know to a greater or lesser extent are seeking the office, including one I served for eight years, is dizzying.  One can only hope they know us a fraction as well as we think we know them.  We wish all our readers good luck in picking the winner, as early as possible.
 
The situation reminds me of a conversation held in 1972.  I was not present but I was told about it at the time.  It was between Alex Rose, president of the Hatters Union and the honest and widely respected Liberal Party leaders, and Ed Morrison, another LP officer who at the time was Deputy Mayor under Mayor John V. Lindsay.  Rose was supporting Lindsay's candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Lindsay was elected mayor as a Republican in 1965 and re-elected in 1969 as a Liberal (he lost the Republican nomination to State Senator John Marchi, who retired in 2006 after fifty years in Albany).  Lindsay switched from Republican to Democrat in August 1971 so he could run for president as a Democrat the next year.  Mayors of New York City tend to believe there is nothing they cannot do.
 
Morrison recounted Lindsay's deficits of intellect and character, his weakness on policy issues, his political judgment, his radicalism, etc.  He then asked Rose, who was his mentor, "How can you support Lindsay for President?"   Rose replied, "Tell me, Ed, do you know the others?" 

This answer, posed as a question, has two meanings.  One is that Lindsay is the only candidate we know.  Two is that if we knew the others, we would find out that they were just as bad.  Alex Rose was a political genius and an honest man.  He fought communism and corruption in the labor movement, at a time (the 1930's and '40s) when both were powerful forces which did not hesitate to use violence.
 
Meanwhile, the Bloomberg campaign, because that is what it really is, adds spice to a political contest that is already coming one year too soon.  There ought to be a Federal law providing a seasonal framework for state primaries, although we do not know what the proper time should be. Running for President, or any high office, is always a four-year proposition for the candidates, but the race should not occupy as much of the public stage as it now does, and we are still in the first half of the third year of Bush 43’s second term. 

Presidential election reform is a project for 2012, when New York City will not host the Olympics.  That is a reminder that our city and our leaders cannot win everything they undertake, particularly when they run against each other.


#386  6.20.07  1779wds