I kind of like the idea of an independent having a significant position in the political arena (ref. Michael Bloomberg's departure from the Republican party), maybe even being President. Both major parties have become swampy and festering messes of navel-gazing collegiality with unpleasant and demanding fringes who make it impossible to focus on ideas and principles. Dominant parties should encourage consensus but the reality at the moment is far from that, thus the ascendence of people who catch a lot of public interest like Ross Perot and Mike Bloomberg. In the latter case, the good news is that he's got New York City running pretty well but the bad news is that he's a fun-squelching school principal in some ways and I'm not sure the scope of his thought is big enough to run a country. A country has similarities to business but is not, in the end, a corporation. On the other hand, maybe the size of the country would make it impossible for him to run nanny-shod over all of us, were he to get that far.
Labels: politics, reflections
Although the idea of a third-party candidate is very compelling for me personally, M. Bloomberg, with his authoritarian/Democratic style of governance (he was never a convincing Republican) he wouldn't be my candidate, in any case.
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