Karl Rove is the not the genius he used to be. Partially responsible for the mismanagement of two wars, the collapse of American prestige around the world, the failure to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive, the loss of Republican control of Congress, the passage of nothing much in terms of legislation, the almost-certain defeat of a Republican presidential candidate next time out and the virtual evisceration of the GOP, he is easy to dismiss if only on account of his record. But when he (gleefully) lambastes the Democratic Congress as a failure, he is certainly on to something. This is a man who knows ineptness when he sees it.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article, Rove enumerated the negatives: “No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform.” The no’s roll on and on, and aside from a partisan dig here or there, no one can quarrel with this. The Democratic Congress, like Churchill’s pudding, lacks theme.
To the left, it is a failure; to the middle, it is immaterial; and to the right, it presents an opportunity for restoration.
The equilibrium of ineptitude — fools at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue — is not lost on the American people. They award Congress even lower approval ratings than they do the president, about 20 percent in the case of the Hill, about 30 percent in the case of George W. Bush. What they think of the crop of presidential candidates is not yet clear, but I, for one, pick up the paper in the morning and read that the economy is sinking and oil could top $100 a barrel and a pandemic of house foreclosures is sweeping our nation of sweet cul-de-sacs — and the people who want to be president have precious little to say about any of these issues.
Enter Mike Bloomberg. He is the current mayor of New York, endowed with near-universal support in his city and about $13 billion in the bank. Intimations of his presidential ambitions are getting stronger.
He cooperated with a Newsweek cover story which, whether he intended it or not, left the clear impression that he can hardly be restrained from running. More to the point, his associates and friends do not, as you might expect, caution me from believing that a presidential run is under consideration. On the contrary, they fairly drool like Pavlov’s famous mutts when the words “White House” are mentioned.
How such a feat can be accomplished — how the Electoral College can be won and how an independent can govern with a Congress composed of Democrats and Republicans — is not the issue for the moment.
Instead, what animates and energizes the hope of a Bloomberg candidacy is the utter failure of the current political establishment to deal with, not to mention solve, the immense problems facing us.
Michael Dukakis ran for the presidency partially on a platform of competence. The American people took one look at him in a tank and concluded that someone else should be commander in chief. Things may be different for a different Mike from, of all places, Massachusetts (Bloomberg grew up in Medford).
A glance at the sky shows more than winter’s coming — maybe a recession, too. All sorts of things are going wrong and some of them, like the crisis on Wall Street, cannot even be gauged. Just who will be stuck owning worthless paper based on worthless mortgages secured by nearly worthless houses is still unknown. Not even the banks — Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, etc. — knew what was happening or, will you believe, what is now happening. Bad times — probably very bad times — are coming.
So competence will have a certain charm. (And Bloomberg is not short on actual charm, either.) These circumstances, not to mention an ability — if not a determination — to spend maybe $1 billion on a campaign could radically change American politics. The chances of this happening are not, I know, great, but Ross Perot did get 19 percent of the vote (nary a vote in the Electoral College, though) and he was perceived as a bit weird and totally unsuited for the presidency.
Bloomberg is a different story altogether.
Will Mayor Mike run? I think he might. Can he win? I still doubt it. But my doubts are nothing compared to my chagrin when I read an op-ed piece by Karl Rove with which my head keeps nodding in agreement. It takes a pretty broken system for Rove to be right. Maybe it will take a Bloomberg Billion to fix it.
Richard Cohen’s e-mail address is cohenr@washpost.com.
(c) 2007, Washington Post Writers Group AP-NY
