Who's On Third...A Plea for Al Gore and Michael Bloomberg

He (Al Gore) is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it.
- David Remnick


Bloomberg should really run - fanfare, please - for the good of the country. Elsewhere in this issue you'll find smart discussions of how American politics could use a competitive jolt from a centrist third party. Those stories do a terrific job of describing how we got into this mess and the mechanism for creating a cure. The specific candidate who best fits the description, and who is best equipped for a 2008 third-party presidential run, is Mike Bloomberg.
- Chris Smith





We are entering a strange period of Republican dominated politics, and no it's not a feeling or a change of the drift, but a real, full scale attack on many of the principles that this government stands for. Not that the entire government is going to collapse, Bush will not denounce his horrible economic policy, and Rumsfeld will not retire anytime soon saying, "That was fun, but it wasn't going to work out."

The change is more real than that. The Republicans aren't massively losing their base. They are moving closer to the center. Sure there are the generals calling for Rumsfeld to quit, George Bush's lowest poll numbers, but this isn't the end of the Republican dominance, just a lessening of the complete choke-hold.

While I look forward to the upcoming 2006 elections, I'm not sure if the sea change is going to happen to really change the actions of Washington, which only the 2008 election could. Certain realities are so entrenched, the idea of them changing is beyond all imagination. Think how odd it would be if Guantanamo just shut down, the government came up with a real exit strategy in Iraq, balanced the budget, fixed welfare, raised taxes on the wealthy, fixed corporate welfare, and got rid of the clean air act and passed a real one.

During the past two days, two articles have popped up that call for something quite different in the elections. The first is a misty-eyed portrait of Al Gore in the New Yorker. It's a piece that not many people have been clamoring for, but it speaks in tears and wanders the hidden depth of hope that was buried after 9-11. Ralph Nader's call in 2000 about both parties being one in the same, doesn't ring true anymore. There is no doubt the world would have been a much different place had Al Gore won. The sadness of the article is balanced by some deep seeded hope, and for some reason it rests in both our understanding of how horribly wrong events can turn and in how courageous Mr. Gore is.

It is past time to recognize that, over a long career, his policy judgment and his moral judgment alike have been admirable and acute. Gore has been right about global warming since holding the first congressional hearing on the topic, twenty-six years ago. He was right about the role of the Internet, right about the need to reform welfare and cut the federal deficit, right about confronting Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo. Since September 11th, he has been right about constitutional abuse, right about warrantless domestic spying, and right about the calamity of sanctioned torture. And in the case of Iraq, both before the invasion and after, he was right - courageously right - to distrust as fatally flawed the political and moral good faith, operational competence, and strategic wisdom of the Bush Administration.

By the end of the article I was ready to once again think about the towering mTennesseennesse. So much has changed since then.

If the next election really does turn into a battle of the New York titans, Hillary vs. Giuliani, then the one name that begs to be added is Bloomberg, every liberal's favorite Republican. New York Magazine ran this story about its favorite mayor. Some Democrats may admire John McCain, but Bloomberg's policies are real and effective liberal-in-disguise policies sold with a Republican coat, and the New York Magazine does a great job explaining why he needs to run.

Bloomberg has compiled an impressive record running the nation's most complicated city in the wake of its greatest tragedy. He's overhauled, if not completely fixed, the public-school system. He's overseen a multifaceted security apparatus, the NYPD, as it has built an international anti-terrorism operation. He's chosen talented subalterns and allowed them to do their jobs. He's governed in a commonsense, adult, nonideological manner, born of the fact that he isn't a lifelong politician. There's also the fact that presidential candidates are judged on authenticity, and Bloomberg is a man who knows himself; he doesn't focus-group every word before speaking. And he could bypass the whole tawdry, enfeebling fund-raising spectacle by bankrolling his own campaign.

It's way too early to begin the excruciating business of picking a candidate for president. But because hunting season opened right after Bush won the last one, I guess it isn't too ridiculous. I'm not calling for an independent party, or for a Bloomberg/Gore ticket. These are just two men I think should run the country, and I wish they were starting to get more coverage. Anyway, this is just hope. And hope is something that's been muffled for a long time.