Bloomberg's Kibitzer Candidacy

After teasing us for a year, Mike Bloomberg is putting his billion dollars back in his wallet and leaving a few platitudes on the plate instead.

In a New York Times OpEd titled "I'm Not Running for President, but...," New York's Mayor delivers a ringing concession speech for a presidential campaign that never started.

As he leaves the arena he didn't enter, Bloomberg chides the future nominees for being "afraid to level" with voters about global trade, global warming, immigration, improving schools and gun control.

"More of the same won’t do, on the economy or any other issue," he says. "We need innovative ideas, bold action and courageous leadership. That’s not just empty rhetoric, and the idea that we have the ability to solve our toughest problems isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream."

But he stands ready, Bloomberg tells us, to help McCain and Obama or Clinton, "to push them forward, by using the means at my disposal to promote a real and honest debate."

In the event the Mayor has forgotten his ethnic roots, what he is proposing to be is a kibitzer, defined as "someone who looks on and offers unwanted, usually meddlesome advice to others."

But not entirely, Bloomberg warns us: "If a candidate takes an independent, nonpartisan approach--and embraces practical solutions that challenge party orthodoxy--I’ll join others in helping that candidate win the White House."

Does he mean Ralph Nader?

Nader, Bloomberg in "David and Goliath"

Now that his second favorite candidate, John Edwards, has dropped out, Ralph Nader is feeling an irresistible urge to pick up the fallen standard and hurl himself once again into the breach.

Ironically, Nader's inner struggle is reported by Bloomberg.com, part of the business news empire that made New York's mayor a billionaire who is, albeit silently, having the same crisis of conscience about saving the nation with an Independent run.

Inverting their physical attributes, Nader and Bloomberg would be playing David and Goliath in a sideshow of the '08 electoral circus to prove that (a) corporate America is crushing its people or (b) only a corporate genius can straighten out the mess Bush is leaving behind.

"Look at the major areas of injustice, deprivation and solutions that are not being addressed by the major candidates," Nader tells a Bloomberg reporter while denying that his 97,488 votes in Florida elected George W. Bush who won the state by just 537 votes over Al Gore in 2000.

Calling him a spoiler, Nader says, "is basically saying that small candidates are second-class citizens."

If Nader takes his pathological hatred of the Clintons into the arena this time, he won't be traveling in even that much style if Bloomberg comes in, too. Billionaires always go first-class and don't leave much space for anyone else.