I haven't decided who I want to vote for yet next year. I don't like Hilary. Barak is ok, but I'm a registered independent, so if he doesn't win his own primary, I can't support him anyway. On the Republican side, I always liked Rudy as mayor, but I don't think he's the least bit qualified to be President. As for the rest... I dunno, just too many to keep track of at this point.
And I keep holding out hope that Mike Bloomberg will run... that he'll go all in and spend a billion on making it to the White House... and make the tough choices that need to be made. When he was Mayor, he made tough, but smart decisions about closing firehouses and raising property taxes because the city was in a in a tough financial spot after 9/11. His approval rating sunk to the lowest approval rating any mayor has ever seen since they started taking polls of mayoral approval ratings. The way he spoke at Cooper Union the other night, he made me believe that he was a guy willing to make tough decisions in Iraq where, as he put it, "there were no good choices."
There's only one problem with Mike Bloomberg...
...he's not running.
And, until he says he's in, his "campaign" tactic of being an outsider who just talks on the sidelines isn't going to pick up any traction. Why?
Being the President of this country requires a ton of passion and dedication. When I hear that the Mayor is "considering" running, that troubles me. That would be like someone "considering" a marriage proposal. When I ask someone to marry me, they better say yes right off the bat, because I don't think I really want to marry someone who has to think about it. More so than anything else, I imagine that the one serious prerequisite of the Presidency is that you absolutely know you want to be President.
I think that's part of the reason people couldn't get behind Al Gore the first time around. I think for a lot of people, it just didn't really seem like he wanted to be President that badly... like he was running because he felt like he had to.... like that's what sitting VP's do.
I've heard that there are a lot of things Bloomberg needs to do first before to prepare to run, like selling the major media and business information company he built from the ground up. Fine, but, at some point, this becomes like that like from Spaceballs:
"What are you preparing. You're always preparing. Just go! "
I've heard that Bloomberg doesn't want to join a race that he doesn't think he can win. Well, sorry Mike, but that's the minimum risk that is required of you to run--to face the fact that you might lose. This isn't going to get handed to you... especially not as a third party candidate. You need to go out and grab it for yourself, and frankly, its surprising to hear that a successful entrepreneur would hesitate to enter a race because he doubts he could win.
You have to give people something to hang their hat on...a parade to get out in front of. I'm not going to go join a campaign to coax you into the race. I want you to run, but if you don't want it enough to say it, every day that passes gets me closer and closer to figuring out who else I can support that actually wants this. Without actionable items, without something specific to ask people to do, its going to be difficult to get people to care at all. There are plenty of people who want to support you, but even more people who don't know anything about you. That takes time, not just money, and I'm afraid that if you wait until Super Tuesday, you're not going to have enough time to convince people that you actually want to be President. A lot of people just aren't going to wait around that long.
So, for now, I'll support the person of Mike Bloomberg, who has done an amazing job for this city, but I can't support the campaign of Mike Bloomberg if it doesn't exist.