Hillary's Perot

Looks like it's gonna be Michael Bloomberg after all:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seriously moving toward a decision to run for president as an independent in 2008 — and his aides are already laying the groundwork for a Bloomberg campaign.

I'm still not ruling out the possibility of a McCain-Hagle 'Revenge of the Sith" spoiler ticket, but Bloomberg's got the cash to put Mrs. Clinton over the top if the race was close enough.

You'll never guess what his campaign's ostensible rationale is going to be.  Well, maybe you will, but I bet your gag reflex will be as difficult to control as mine:

Next weekend Bloomberg will join Democratic and Republican statesmen at the University of Oklahoma in an effort to push major party candidates into renouncing partisan gridlock.

There's the Perot template, in all its ignorant glory.  Run as the voice of the "middle of the road," the "sensible center," the "unrepresented moderate majority," or whatever the hell else these people who believe in nothing and stand for less want to call themselves.

And as unserious as they are, that's how seriously they take themselves:

Former Senator David Boren of Oklahoma, one of the organizers of the gathering, told the New York Times that if major party candidates did not formally embrace bipartisanship within two months, “I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent.” [emphasis added]

What does "formally embrace bipartisanship" mean?  A Republican-Democrat party merger?  All the GOP and Donk candidates quitting the race and turning Mrs. Clinton's coronational processional over to Bloomberg?  It's like they demand politicians stop spoiling politics by practicing politics.  What color is the sky in Boren's world, anyway?

There are partisan differences in American politics because the two parties adamantly disagree on pretty much everything.  And that partisan rivening is driven primarily, if not exclusively, by the Democrats.  It wasn't Republicans who despoiled the post-WWII Cold War foreign policy consensus; it wasn't GOP youngsters who took to the streets in the sixties chanting "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today" and "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!"  It wasn't "the Republican attack machine" that declared war on the Chicago Police Department outside the 1968 Donk convention.  To the contrary, it was the GOP, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, and later Newt Gingrich, culminating in George W. Bush (who has since largely squandered it), that build a new majority consensus for peace through strength and properity through lower taxes and smaller government.  Even Bill Clinton, left-wing extremist and political genius that he was, chose to leech off of that consensus and serve two presidential terms in the '90s rather than try and tear it down and get cashiered like his party's former congressional majority.

Even a nodding acquaintance with American political history shows that there has NEVER been a "formal embrace of bipartisanship" in the length and breadth of the nation's 231-year existence.  We simply do not, and will never, all agree on how the country should be run.  We have a political process precisely for the purpose of hashing those disputes out in ways that don't include barricades and insurgencies and car bombs and assassinations and endless festering revolutionism.

Partisanism, to coin a counter-term, is how politics is SUPPOSED to work.  What Boren and the Bloomies are actually demanding, just as the Perotbots did before them, is the repudiation of representative democracy in favor of conformist, voluntary autocracy.  That IS the logical conclusion of a process that demands the end of politics.  After all, it's reasonable to conclude that, even if this "formal biparitsan" accord could ever be reached, one party or the other would break it at some point; wouldn't there then have to be some sort of enforcement mechanism?  Perhaps, one party being sanctioned by being barred from competing for some or all federal offices?  Or being hampered from doing so, not unlike universities sanctioned by the NCAA lose scholarships, are banned from playing in bowl games, and even have to forfeit past victories?

That's if the Bloomies are serious about their demands.  Either way, in practice this insistance on "bipartisanism" will be targeted squarely and solely at the eventual Republican nominee and every candidate down the GOP ticket across the country.  Senator Clinton will be cut a pass in return for paying lip service to this "centrist" pablum swill, and that will peel off enough "independents" from Romney or Rudy or Huck to hand the election and the country over to a woman and party that wrote the book on partisanism, and will only have just gotten started on the sequels.

Here's an interesting cross-post-script:

Another scheduled attendee at the Oklahoma meeting, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, has said he would consider being Bloomberg’s running mate on an independent ticket.

How's that for keeping his options open?

But here's the punchline:

Political insiders say two things are certain regarding Bloomberg and the presidency — he will not resign his post as mayor to run, and he will not enter the campaign unless he believes he can win.

“Normally I don’t think an independent candidacy would have a chance,” said Boren, who is now president of the University of Oklahoma.

“I don’t think these are normal times.”

How's that for an illustration of political solipsism?