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Bloomberg for President?

Mike Bloomberg Headshot.jpg

It took him a long time to make it official.

And his campaign plan seems to turn on the impossible -- skip Iowa, skip New Hampshire, focus on primaries further on down the calendar.

But hey, this is the post-Trump age. Maybe we should throw out our notion of what is possible in politics.

If we really are going to throw out the rule book, though, I don't see what anyone would want to settle for a Trump/Bloomberg choice in the autumn. Much of the US, after all, exists outside of the NYC metropolitan area.

Seriously, to those people (and I've encountered many) who say, "I voted for Trump because he built a great business, and we need that sort of savvy in the White House," I have two responses: first, you misunderstand the realities of Donald Trump's business career and, second, if you are at all consistent you must be a real enthusiast for Bloomberg!"

Quick Bloomberg vita: He was a general partner at Salomon Brothers in the 1970s. He headed equity trading and, later, systems development there. He was laid off in 1981 when a new company bought Salomon, BUT since he was a partner, they could do that only by buying his interest, so he got $10 million out of the deal.

He built that $10 million into billions by buying a global news-data-and-analysis firm, Bloomberg LP.

All very impressive. Unfortunately, I don't regard his time in Gracie Mansion as equally impressive -- that I will leave as a tale for another day.

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