New York, NY – Don’t read too much into President Obama’s latest efforts to butter up the mayor. Whispering his name for Treasury secretary didn’t work two years ago. Why would it now?
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Back in 2008, both Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, were chasing Bloomberg’s endorsement.
McCain put the mayor on his short list for vice president. Obama did nothing to dismiss speculation Bloomberg would add economic heft to his cabinet.
“If he wanted to be Treasury secretary, he would have endorsed [Obama] in ’08,” said an adviser intimately familiar with Bloomberg’s political positioning. “They were desperate for Mike’s endorsement.”
Now, Obama is mired in the midterm muck. Bloomberg hasn’t exactly raved about the President’s performance, though he has been polite enough not to criticize him publicly.
That’s the real reason Obama is wooing Bloomberg, say people in the mayor’s camp – as Michael Corleone famously said in “Godfather: Part II,” keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Bloomberg is a billionaire who dreams of changing the world. He very seriously considered running for President and, despite his public denials, may consider doing it in the future.
Some advisers question whether Bloomberg would even want to be Treasury secretary – much less give up his day job for it.
“He hasn’t had a boss since he started his company,” one adviser says. “He doesn’t want to work for anybody else.”
Bloomberg is a fiscal wonk, but the real scope of his interests are on display at his charitable foundation, which wants to save lives all around the world.
For plenty of other ambitious Americans, being Treasury secretary would be the capstone to a career and the first line in their obituary – and even if they didn’t wholeheartedly agree with the boss, it might be worth it for the experience.
Not for Bloomberg.
As one of his aides put it: “Would you want to give up being mayor so you could sit in your office and have Rahm Emanuel’s assistant tell you not to say something?”
Bloomberg you can try but there is no luck for you there you wont get my vot
“Bloomberg is a billionaire who dreams of changing the world” Thats a good one! raise our cost of living, Show us that you will buy us with your money, show us that you can tout the low crime rate even though it’s well known to you that the stats were manipulated and therefore worthless, show us that you are only for the rich people, and show us what a good for nothing you are. (if he’s only good for an economy, here we nosedived recently and are doing pretty bad)
so he will put mosques across the us, not just nyc city.
i hate him
Yes, So am I.
Even though I have to admit that he DID succeeded with many projects, although not all that helpful (like 311) , bit basically he is the most hated mayor in recent history. His whole play of parking tickets and towing cars, raising property taxes, and his plan of “charging” to enter Manhattan is enough to show us his point of view. Careless to poor people. Very bad.
Someone said: “He is the richest man in New York – no one has the ability to buy as much enemies as him”…. This is a good one!