Why I’m endorsing Michael Bloomberg for president | Opinion

Michael Bloomberg was just put through the flames by his rivals on the debate stage Wednesday night.

I would have paid more attention to this thing save two major factors: my home institution’s basketball teams had home games and I actually have minor duties, as well as a massive fan-addiction to feed.

The second is that I have tuned in, in a desultory way, to each of these snooze-fests — either in real time or on the so-called highlight reel — all through the season to date; there was no reason to believe this one would be much different.

Boy, was I wrong.

Bloomberg’s colleagues went after him like rabid weasels. Given my general sense of the others, the fact that they piled on, ripping his head off, was an instant reason to like him: whatever these others despised, there was a negative notion in my head that as a result, he might be OK.

Bloomberg has tons of cash, and has been spending it like an outhouse a-fire. His net worth is around $54 billion, so he can afford a little side-hobby like running for the presidency. But that’s the main reason I’m interested in him — and will endorse him with enthusiasm.

He is central to my fast-evolving scheme to hand the presidency back to Donald Trump, yet strip him of any power whatsoever.

Trump can be reduced from a real threat to the American republic to becoming an impotent bouncing bobblehead from the Twittersphere. The jump, I think, is easy.

Bloomberg is a fine traditional candidate. He’s old, white, extremely rich, somewhat bigoted, as well as more than a little misogynistic — a perfect frame for every American president from the 1920s forward.

He’s smarter than Trump. He’s an actual businessperson with actual, demonstrable business acumen; he’s unlikely to destroy the system that made him.

He ran the city of New York for three terms. He might even win — he’d have as much chance as many and far better than the frontrunner.

But whether he wins or not may not be all that important.

We do NOT have a parliamentary system in the U.S. The chambers of the legislature are independent of that executive. When the president does not have control of, or a willingness to compromise or negotiate with, the House, there’s trouble: the House is where all appropriations (funding of projects and policy) comes from.

If the president cannot negotiate/compromise with or control the Senate, the Senate can clamp down on the president’s ability to appoint (particularly in recent years, the judiciary).

To truly win, the Democrats do not need to remove president. But President Trump’s “policy and appointment-making” as well as his “general mayhem in government” teeth can be yanked out very effectively by a legislative campaign strategy that wins the Senate.

The Democrats do not need the presidency. They need real, hardball political power. And that, friends, is to be found in controlling Congress.

My proposition to the Democrats is simple: nominate Mike Bloomberg for the top of the ticket.

He will fund himself — $54 billion seems a decent start on a presidential campaign, and he also seems to know a few people with a few bucks. This, in turn, means that the balance of resources normally rounded up for a futile run at an entrenched president could be redirected into precisely targeted, truly strategic attempts to win the Senate (think Colorado, Arizona, Iowa, Maine and so on).

The chance to reduce Trump to an impotent Twitter troll and Mitch McConnell to a feeble, gasping windbag, doddering around the Senate basement, is just too good to miss.

And to do it on the back of the billions that Brother Mike seems so willing to pour into the bucket rounds out the perfect season.

President Trump has taught us the hard lesson that thinking “outside the box” wins power.

Let’s take that lesson to the bank.

R. Bruce Anderson (randerson2@flsouthern.edu) is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics at Florida Southern College in Lakeland.