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Mike's Next Best Chance
November 18th, 2009

You read it here first (well, second): Mayor Michael Bloomberg still has a shot at being president — and he could owe it all to Sarah Palin.

Writing in the Daily Beast, Mark McKinnon suggests that Palin’s domination of the media this week and the lack of any Republic candidate likely to appeal to independent voters, along with the Democrats being in what he calls “free fall,” paves the way for an independent to be elected president in 2012. And who is America’s best known — and richest — independent politician?

Michael Bloomberg, who by then, McKinnon says, will be “tanned, rested, $16 billion flush, term limited — and bored.”

McKinnon, a political consultant, may simply be trying to get on the Bloomberg gravy train He gushes the mayor “gets results” and is “pragmatic, smart, a consensus builder, a true centrist.” He credits Bloomberg for things he didn’t do, such as “taking on the unions” and winning an “unprecedented third term” (third term yes, unprecedented no) and accepts Bloomberg’s own figures on his achievements, without bothering to mention any of the mayor’s failures.

But leaving all that aside, is this going to be, as a New York icon put it, déjà vu all over again. Let’s say McKinnon, in the role of Kevin Sheekey, convinces Bloomberg that this time he really, really can be president? But then something happens. The economy improves, and we find a way out of Afghanistan, boosting President Barack Obama’s popularity. Or the Republican Party decides not to nominate a Sarah Palin-Glenn Beck ticket. Bloomberg will once again be a year away from unemployment. Working full time at giving away money still does not strike him as all that exciting. And there’s some kind of crisis in the city (isn’t there always?).

Coming to City Hall, October 2012: “Extending Term Limits — The Sequel.”

By Gail Robinson on November 18, 2009, 5:05 pm
In category: Electoral Politics, Gotham City | No Comments »

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