One Police Plaza

Principles and Punches

March 11, 2019

So, Michael Bloomberg has decided — yet again — not to run for president.

Forget his mealy-mouthed explanation: that his path to the Democratic nomination is too narrow. The real reason, as NYPD Confidential has stated in the past, is that while Mayor Mike is willing to spend bushels of his money, he is afraid to take a punch.

This election cycle around, the punches would have come not only from Donald Trump but from the Democratic Party’s left wing. Bloomberg is a white male, a moderate, a self-made billionaire, all of which seems anathema to much of the Democratic left. He’s also Jewish and, like virtually all Jews of a certain generation, a fan of Israel. This could lead to attacks on him by freshman Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her ilk.

It’s all too bad because Bloomberg would probably make an excellent president. He’s smart, restrained and [for the most part] principled. Unlike most billionaires and successful politicians, he usually keeps his ego under control. Any president, Democrat or Republican, would be foolish not to consider him for a top cabinet post, such as the Treasury or State Departments.

Then there’s the irony of his tenure as mayor of New York City.  Although he served three mostly successful terms, presiding over continued declines in violent crime, his mayoralty would probably be criticized by the Democratic left as discriminatory against black New Yorkers.

That’s because as mayor he abdicated his responsibilities by turning the police department over to Ray Kelly — no questions asked —making Kelly the longest-serving and most powerful police commissioner in New York City’s history. Kelly’s freedom from supervision and accountability allowed him to design an oppressive stop-and-frisk policy whereby cops randomly stopped, questioned and/or searched mostly young black and Hispanic males, regardless of whether they had committed a crime. Kelly’s stop-and-frisk was part of a larger policy to incarcerate violent criminals, a policy that was praised during Bloomberg’s and Kelly’s 12-year tenures. Now it is viewed in New York as needlessly imprisoning swaths of the city’s black population.

Now let’s return to Bloomberg’s ego and his principles. Does anyone remember the promises Bloomberg made when he first ran for mayor in 2001? He promised to govern above politics and party labels and to serve only two terms, as city law prescribed.

So, what happened? Well, like virtually all billionaires and successful politicians, Mayor Mike fell in love with himself. In 2009, he considered getting on the national ticket, as president or vice-president. He ultimately dropped both bids for lack of support.

He then leaned on the City Council to abrogate the two–term limit law to allow him to run for a third term. He spent millions in his race against the lackluster, poorly funded Comptroller William Thompson. Yet he barely defeated Thompson — in retrospect, perhaps a harbinger that Mayor Mike’s future electoral chances were no more.