Why is the media so fascinated with the potential candidacy of NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg? Jonathan Alter argued the following over the weekend:

Mike Bloomberg is a long shot to be the next president. Even a trillion dollars couldn't change that. But Bloomberg's vast fortune and reputation for competent management may yet make him vice president.

Alter suggests that he would be a good fit on the Democratic ticket, which makes absolutely no sense to me. First off, as he notes, the 12th Amendment bars Hillary Clinton from picking him because they are both from New York state. So, he'd only be the veep if Obama selected him. And what of Obama? Alter writes:

And while an Obama-Bloomberg ticket would be Archie Bunker's worst nightmare, the presence of a highly successful manager as the chief operating officer of the United States would prove a big asset for Obama, Edwards or anyone else at the top of the ticket.

This seems to me to be a very bad fit. Regarding what Alter might call the "Archie Bunker Factor" - we can write it off, if we like, but that does not mean it would not be a factor. So, does it not strike you as a little risky for Obama? What's more, would this pick not alienate the left? How disappointed would the left - whose hard work in the field will be a requisite for a Democratic victory next November - be? Would this not alienate everybody in the Democratic Party - if Obama went outside the party to find a veep? And, more generally, are there no Democrats who have reputations as "highly successful managers?"

Here's a question I can't help but ask: who the hell cares about this guy Bloomberg? Is there anybody with a zip code that does not begin with "10" or "20"? I'm out here in 60614, and I gotta tell ya: I don't feel it. The fascination with him seems to me to be entirely with the media.

Why are they so nuts about this guy? I think that it comes from their perception that he has been successful in New York City, and their expectation that he could perhaps come to Washington and get things done. Return to the Alter quotation: "a highly successful manager." That is what they think Bloomberg brings to the table. He can manage the federal government and get things done, just as he did the NYC government.

I think this is a naive view. Washington is "not working" not because it lacks strong and effective managers. Washington is "not working" because it was designed not to work when there is an absence of political consensus, which there is right now. Washington "fails to work" more often than not because ours is a diverse nation with many competing interests, and our Founders feared the possibility that one interest might railroad another. They thought that the best way to preserve our republican form of government would be to make political change next-to-impossible without a political consensus.

Mike Bloomberg is not going to "fix" any of this. He would probably make the government less capable of "doing things" because he is not affiliated with either of the country's best chances for consensus building: a political party. Journalists and DC pundits, for as much as they love having stuff get done in Washington, ironically seem to despise the parties - which serve as the centripetal forces in our centrifugal system. If our Constitution disperses power across different branches of government, a major purpose of our parties is to organize and cultivate a caucus of similarly minded people so that coordination across branches might be possible. The parties offer, without question, our best chance at the kind of coherent, responsible government that journalists and pundits claim to love. Their purpose is precisely to build consensus - first among like-minded officials across branches, second among the voters in an electoral campaign, and third among a majority in government. By making a third party candidate president of the United States, you put a temporary end to the possibility of this kind of coherence. After all, everybody in Congress would want President Bloomberg defeated in the next election. Just how much does anybody think he would get done?

This whole Bloomberg fuss honestly does not surprise me. I have long thought that journalists and pundits systematically overemphasize the role of individuals in our system, and systematically underemphasize the role of impersonal forces like our federal structure. If our system is "broken" (which, incidentally, is an ideological point of view), it must be because the men and women currently running it are incapable; thus, we must find a new person to run it. What about all of the impersonal forces that have induced this "brokenness?" Why do we never see journalistic accounts of these?

And, more broadly, have journalists not thought that maybe Bloomberg has been as successful as he has because these forces, which are in plentiful supply on a national level, are not present on a city level? Our national politics is much more diverse than local politics, even the local politics of a diverse metropolis like New York. I know New York is diverse - but only the Congress is a place where a representative from San Fransisco, CA and Provo, UT come to work out their differences! What is more, the objectives of government at the local level are essentially agreed upon. Largely gone are the days when big cities like New York endeavored to be agents of social justice. Now, the goal of most governing officials is to run the city efficiently. On a national level, there are differences of opinion about basic governmental goals, let alone how to achieve them.