WHO did he think he was kid ding?
It was infuriating from the outset, this undeclared presidential campaign by a New York City mayor who kept telling everyone he wasn’t running while allowing his top political aide to drop one hint after another than he just might.
No independent has ever been elected president.
No New York City mayor in modern times has achieved higher office.
There’s never been a Jewish president.
There wasn’t one poll showing Bloomberg coming within striking distance of the major party contenders. All this the mayor conceded, even as he undertook a two-year undeclared campaign for the White House.
All the while, Bloomberg kept denying he had any intention to leave office before the end of his term – sometimes to the point of angrily lecturing reporters to stop asking about his presidential ambitions.
Aides, meanwhile, joyfully leaked one tidbit after another about the sub-rosa campaign.
The con job included a revived mikebloomberg.com Web site. There were the reports of a 50-state polling operation. High-powered consultants were supposedly on standby.
Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey was allowed free reign to stir up the Bloomberg-for-president frenzy, with the mayor claiming with a straight face that he didn’t “control” his loyal underling.
Former mayoral pollster Doug Schoen predicated an entire book on the argument that the electorate was hungering for an independent candidate much like guess-who.
No change in the political landscape could dissuade Schoen, who even argued that the annoying entry of Ralph Nader into the presidential contest created a new opening for Bloomberg. For Schoen, everything that happened created a new opening for Bloomberg.
But there was no sign the electorate was clamoring for an independent contender able to jump in at will because he had an extra $1 billion.
Even as Bloomberg was denouncing the major candidates for delivering the same old rhetoric, voters were flocking to the polls around the country to show their support for John McCain or Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama.
“The candidates seem afraid to level with them,” Bloomberg charged last night in an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times.
Certainly, someone wasn’t leveling with the voters.