Jon Meacham: Hello, I’m Jon Meacham and I’m looking forward to answering, or trying to answer, some of your questions about the Newsweek cover this week.
Bellevue, WA: Are there any historical situations that are similar to the one that Bloomberg is in now? Any examples from history that would give us a clue as to what will happen from here? Jon Meacham: What really interests me about a possible Bloomberg presidential bid is that it has few, if any, historical precedents. We have had rich guys who thought they should be president, we have had businessmen who thought they should be president, and we have had any number of officeholders who thought they should be president. Bloomberg is the first to be all three—and to say (or at least Kevin Sheekey, his political adviser, says) that he would spend $1 billion on an independent bid. That kind of money, spent by a man with Bloomberg’s mayoral experience, makes comparing him to Ross Perot a true apples-and-oranges exercise.
Athens, GA: What sense did you get from talking to Bloomberg in regards to what his intentions are for the future? Jon Meacham: I think he is going to wait until February or March of 2008, look at who the major-party nominees are, and then decide two things. First, can he win? He does not want to run as what the political types call a “spoiler.” He needs to be convinced that he could get the necessary electoral votes to win in the Electoral College. And if he is convinced of that, then he faces the second decision: Should he run? My sense, and it is just a sense, is that Bloomberg wants to run for president. There is nothing in his life story to suggest that he would step back from a challenge.
Fairfax, VA: It’s interesting to think about the possibility of Hillary, Rudy and Bloomberg all ending up in the same race. But it also strikes some of us as Northeast Corridor fantasyland. Given the shift in political power south and west in the country, why does the media seem to believe that the election will be an all-New York affair? Jon Meacham: Great question. (But isn’t “Northeast Corridor fantasyland” redundant?) Serious answer: I think the attacks of September 11 and the Iraq War have scrambled most of the understandably conventional assumptions about presidential politics in our time. I grew up in the South as Reagan solidified the shift from Democrats to Republicans, and I think you are exactly right when you talk about the gradual but real power shift west as well. But interestingly, there is no Sunbelt governor or former governor (Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush) in the serious running this time. With security and competence as the overarching issues, I think (and it is just that, a thought) that ordinary geographic and even cultural considerations are playing a far smaller role than in the last quarter century. Think about it: the leading Republican candidates include a pro-choice former mayor of New York and a former governor of Massachusetts who is a Mormon; the Democrats include a First Lady-turned-New York senator and a young senator from an ethnically and culturally diverse background. This is, as Eleanor Roosevelt said of 1940, no ordinary time.
Arlington, VA: Do you think a third party candidate could ever have a plausible shot at the White House? It seems like the American electoral system largely rules out that possibility. Jon Meacham: It is tough, tough, tough, but nothing is impossible. The Founders made it difficult for anyone to be elected president (remember, they drafted the Constitution before they knew for certain that two parties, or any parties, would emerge), but the wonderful thing about history lies in its capacity to surprise.
New York, NY: Do you think Bloomberg has enough name recognition outside of New York City to make a serious run? It seems like Guiliani already has taken claim to the New York City Mayor identity. Will that be a problem for Bloomberg? Jon Meacham: I don’t want to be overly flip, but it would not take Mike Bloomberg long to buy all the name recognition in the world. If he really is willing to spend $1 billion (of his own money), the real problem may be how viewers of television or web users could avoid the guy.
Boise, ID: You wrote that you regard Bloomberg as one of the leading showmen on the political stage today. He certainly seems like a competent leader, and one that has cooled the racial tensions that flared up on his predecessor’s watch. But the few times I’ve seen him on CSPAN he seems like a pretty flat speaker, and a guy who lacks the flair of some of our more colorful politicians. What am I missing? Jon Meacham: You’re right in that he is no Lincoln or Reagan or Bill Clinton. There can be a kind of laconic quality to his formal speeches. But people have also seen him pull off really impressive rhetorical turns. He won’t ever win, I think, on his poetry, but if the country were in the mood for a man with a strong grasp of the prose of politics, he would probably be a very viable possibility.
Pasadena, CA: You focus a lot on Bloomberg’s childhood in your story. Why is this an important age to look at when considering his potential presidency? What context does it provide? Jon Meacham: The child, as the saying has it, is the father of the man (or the mother of the woman, as the case may be). I’m a big believer in the relevance of biography in explaining who people are and how they got that way. That is hardly a revelatory remark, I know, but a lot of journalism is about the here-and-now, as it should be, when there is value in tracing how public figures got to be who they are. The fact that FDR felt he had to keep secrets from his mother, for example, helps explain why he was a wily politician. The fact that Richard Nixon felt excluded and dismissed by the establishment helps explain what he did when he got ultimate power. And, in Bloomberg’s case, the fact that he grew up feeling like something of an outsider—there were a few instances of anti-Semitism that touched his family—while finding security, success and acceptance in the scouts and in the patriotic culture of Medford, Mass., in the 1940s and ’50s, helps explain why he is driven, and why he acts the way he does.
Eugene, OR: Which candidate do you think would suffer the most from a Bloomberg run? That is, who would he be taking voters away from? Jon Meacham: Nearly impossible to say. Conventional wisdom is that he hurts the Republican and, if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, virtually guarantees her election. But if he runs, he will be a new kind of wild card, and I would bet that he would draw from both.
Oyster Bay, NY: Do you think Bloomberg has a realistic shot at winning? Or, what factors would have to align to make that possible? Jon Meacham: In typical times I would say that an independent bid, or the possibility of an independent bid, tends to be a media fantasy. As I’ve said above, though, what makes this potentially different is the amount of money Bloomberg may be willing to spend, and the fact that he would be running with a real record of governance that voters could judge for themselves. Thanks so much for your good questions.
