Mike Bloomberg could buy the White House

He just quit the GOP and became an independent. But does America crave a sane version of Ross Perot with actual governing experience?

By Walter Shapiro

Read more: Republican Party, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, Ralph Nader, New York City, Ross Perot, Ed Koch, News, Walter Shapiro, Chuck Hagel, 2008 election

June 12, 2007 | NEW YORK -- Mike Bloomberg, the mega-billions mayor of America's richest city, proclaimed his above-the-fray neutrality in the presidential race at a recent press conference.

"I'm going to stay out of both the primaries and the general election because I've got to work with everybody as mayor of the city of New York," declared Bloomberg, a Democrat turned nominal Republican and now independent who has been elected to two terms as Rudy Giuliani's successor. "And if I pick sides, the public may not feel that I'm representing them."

These seemingly laudable sentiments deserve a Bronx cheer because they collide with reality. As host of the 2004 GOP Convention, Bloomberg praised George W. Bush from the stage at Madison Square Garden for "leading the global war on terrorism." And Bloomberg's top political advisors make scant secret that they are currently plotting ways for him to enter the 2008 White House field as a problem-solving independent, socially liberal and fiscally responsible.

Talk about New York City in your face -- imagine a three-way contest among Hillary, Rudy and Mayor Mike. About the only thing for sure is that the Second Avenue subway would be built, no matter who won.

Bloomberg waves off the presidential speculation, repeatedly joking about the political prospects on a national stage of a divorced, 5-foot-7 Jewish billionaire. But make no mistake, the Bloomberg high command is serious about calculating all the odds and angles, comfortable in the reality that a Daddy Warbucks candidate can defer a decision until early next year.

Watching the 65-year-old Bloomberg revel in being mayor suggests that he has outsize ambitions even by New York standards. He is conscious of his legacy as the mayor who battled for public health (banning restaurant smoking and trans fats) and the environment (his current crusade is to tax cars and trucks entering central Manhattan) and presided over a buoyant economy (a $4.4 billion budget surplus and the lowest unemployment rate in more than three decades).

In many ways, Bloomberg is the anti-Giuliani, who goes out of his way to avoid the polarizing pyrotechnics of his predecessor. "Mike doesn't govern New York as a normal mayor," said Mitchell Moss, a professor of city planning at New York University and an informal advisor to Bloomberg. "Normally you govern New York by primal therapy. Mike has done it by being direct and candid."

As Queens City Councilman Eric Gioia, a Democrat who has sometimes tangled rather than tangoed with the mayor, put it, "He gets high marks for lowering the temperature in New York. There won't be any race riots on Mike Bloomberg's watch."

Bloomberg (the ultimate self-made politician) sometimes radiates a noblesse-oblige attitude toward critics and an impatience with the demands of the city's rapacious press corps. At the Brooklyn press conference in late May, a reporter began a question about a police shooting by saying, "The attorney representing the familyb

Hemmed in by term limits that will force him to leave office after the 2009 municipal election, Bloomberg seems to be searching for new worlds to conquer. With Eliot Spitzer just inaugurated as New York's first Democratic governor in 12 years, there is only one elective job soon to be vacant for a politician with Bloomberg's bent for executive leadership -- and its home office is on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"Mike Bloomberg should run for president for one reason -- America and the rest of the world is ready for change," said Moss. "We've had eight years of ideology. It would be worthwhile to have someone who just cares about getting things done."

While Moss is a public cheerleader, there is also widespread private speculation around City Hall that Bloomberg may actually do it. "Bloomberg has everything he needs to run for president without consequences," said a leading New York City Democrat. "And he's self-centered enough to do it." Christine Quinn, the Democratic speaker of the City Council and a Bloomberg fan, is convinced that the mayor has no intention of entering the presidential fray. But even Quinn admits that the speculation helps Bloomberg.

"New Yorkers like big leaders," she theorized in an interview. "They loved the bigness of [former Mayor] Ed Koch. They loved the bigness of Rudy Giuliani. And the idea that your mayor could become president is big. New Yorkers like to be the biggest, the best, the most important -- and the idea that your mayor could be president makes us feel those things that we New Yorkers like to feel."

The architects of a Bloomberg presidential boomlet start with the premise that nearly 40 percent of voters define themselves as independents. (That statistic may be slightly exaggerated. Surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press have placed the number of self-described independents at around 30 percent for the past three years, though that figure has been trending higher in 2007.)

Next page: "On the Republican side, they're not happy with their choices"