No, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn’t announced his candidacy for ‘08 (or any vice-presidential aspirations for that matter). Not yet. But he has been doing some out of the ordinary globetrotting as of late. And he’s set to speak at the UN’s global warming conference in Bali, where nations are assembling to hash out a follow-up accord to the Kyoto Protocol.In the face of continued resistance from the Bush administration to assume any kind of global leadership on climate (and less than riveting positions from most candidates, as well a toothless Democratic majority in Congress), Bloomberg is an enormous breath of fresh and fearless air.
Which is precisely why SolveClimate has added Mayor Bloomberg to its Policy Tracker. The tracker assesses presidential candidates on their climate merits alone.
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Bloomberg certainly has a proven track record of good environmental and alternative energy policy. He could more than hold his own with the Democrats on this issue.
NEW YORK (CBS) ― It’s a mystery meeting that’s sure to have the Clinton camp concerned – Mayor Bloomberg had coffee and eggs this morning with Hillary’s main opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination: Barack Obama.
Maggie Hickey, CBS
Update: Monica Crowley thinks that such an obvious and publicized meeting was a sign from Bloomberg that he will not run if Obama gets the nomination.
There is only one politician of note who has really tried to take on the teachers’ unions, and he is not running for president — yet.
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Michael Bloomberg is back in the 2008 presidential picture, and one thing is for sure: There is a statesman-sized hole to fill in the center of American politics. It would fit a figure who is strong on national security, unlike all the Democratic candidates, yet fiscally responsible and socially moderate to liberal, unlike the Republicans.
Mort Kondracke, RollCall
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Bloomberg would be attractive to many American voters who, though fiscally moderate to conservative, don’t feel at home in the Republican Party because of social issues. These voters feel alienated by the Democrats’ politically motivated calls for immediate withdrawal because they realize that that is not a viable option. Bloomberg knows that, having called those Democrats “irresponsible.” In his Authors@Google talk from June, he clearly expresses a pragmatic view of Iraq based on facts, not politics or ideology.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been receiving foreign policy briefing sessions on a wide variety of topics, providing the strongest indication yet that he is considering a run for the White House, the Huffington Post has learned.The sessions, which were confirmed by multiple sources, have been conducted with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser. One source described her as “Bloomberg’s Condi.”
Sam Stein, Huffington Post
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“They’re a challenge to a rotten political culture that rewards sellouts and sycophants, and I’ve just always thought that we can do better … This is a challenge to candidates to move beyond photo-ops, to reject stage-managed town hall meetings, and to talk about how we’re going to use real accountability to solve real problems and take real questions from our constituents and give them real answers.”
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“I believe that the absence of accountability in our national political culture is an increasingly serious problem. Accountability begins with recognizing that you work for all the people—not a party.”
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This is a very nice interview with Karin Gallet, head of the Draft Bloomberg Committee.
