Blog P.I.

In today’s Politico, analyst Roger Simon throws water on the media-invented boomlet for potential presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg. He makes a few smart observations, the best of which explains why self-funding his campaign may actually be an impediment to building a base of support:

[W]hen voters give you money, they often protect their investment by voting for you. When you finance your own campaign, you don’t build that base of support.

And while I tend to agree with the overall point of his column — Bloomberg is too smart to blow a billion dollars on a hopeless candidacy — it does contain this bit of unmitigated silliness:

We have elected people from all kinds of professions to the presidency. George Washington was a surveyor, Abraham Lincoln was a rail-splitter, Andrew Johnson was a tailor, Harry Truman was a haberdasher, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer and Ronald Reagan was an actor. But we have never elected a mayor.

Say what? Simon deliberately cites early, pre-political vocations by these former presidents and, tongue presumably in cheek, compares them favorably to Bloomberg’s current place of employment, Manhattan’s City Hall. Except Washington also was a wartime general, Lincoln was a lawyer and member of the House, Johnson was a member of the House, Senate and a governor before becoming Vice President, Truman was a farmer, judge and senator, and both Carter and Reagan were both governors.

Simon is correct that a mayor has never been elected president, though that is the highest public office attained by Giuliani as well. Citing Bloomberg’s pre-political career, as a businessman, would keep the symmetry, although it surely doesn’t sound as goofy as “rail-splitter” or “haberdasher.”

On the other hand, it would put Bloomberg in the company of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush. Not exactly exalted company — which might have been a slightly better argument, without the contrived goofiness of reducing presidential employment histories to caricatures.