Friday, February 14, 2020

In Praise of a Jewish Elf


The Democratic Party is currently trying to choose the candidate that they hope will be able to remove the Occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this November. While Bernie Sanders, America’s favourite “socialist” has had a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primaries, the field looks pretty confused and inconclusive. While Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren may be popular on college campuses, its easy for the Republicans to portray them as “crazy socialist” (socialist being a dirty word in American politics). The former Vice-President Joe Bidden is an uninspiring candidate and a cloud of suspicion on his basic integrity lingers from the Occupant’s impeachment hearing (there are enough Trump supporters who argue that their hero was victimized because he was trying to dig up dirt on Joe Bidden). While Pete Buttigieg may have many of the “right credentials,” (religious combat veteran) and comes across well on TV, he’s had problems attracting people of colour and the question remains – is America, the land that has yet to elect a woman, ready for a homosexual?

There is, however, one candidate that may have a chance of upsetting the Occupant. That candidate is Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor of New York and founder of the Wire Service that bares his name (in the interest of disclosure, I’ve been fairly successful at getting people interviewed by Bloomberg when my main source of income was PR work).

Mr. Bloomberg is in many ways not the ideal candidate. After three years of a “billionaire” in the White House, having another billionaire as president may seems like a recipe for disaster. Mr. Bloomberg has vowed to fund his campaign out of his pocket and this has made him vulnerable to attacks. Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have pointed out that Mr. Bloomberg’s vast fortune in politics is precisely the problem of politics being dominated by “Big Donors.” Mr. Sander’s attack on Mr. Bloomberg’s wealth can be seen at:


Mr. Bloomberg has not been flawless in his campaign and has made mistakes. His “stop, question and frisk policies,” while Mayor of New York, which happened to target brown and black men have come to haunt him. Mr. Bloomberg’s flaws as a campaigner can be found at:


Having said all of that, there are reasons to pay attention to a Bloomberg candidacy and to even want that candidacy to succeed. In many ways, Mr. Bloomberg is the “real” version of why people voted for the Occupant.

One of the reasons why people voted for Trump in 2016 was his often-publicized wealth. Not only did people site his wealth as plus, they also said that as a successful businessman who would run the country like his successful businesses.

I’ve heard someone argue that Donald Trump’s wealth made it impossible for him to be bought and he was not beholden to big monied interest. The voting public have also argued that if they went with Trump his experience in getting rich would help them get rich too. Think of it, Donald Trump started a show called the “Apprentice” which was all about people killing themselves for the opportunity to work for Donald Trump and find a path to riches.

If you can apply that argument to voting for Donald Trump, you have to apply that very same argument to Michael Bloomberg, whose wealth is many times what Donald Trumps’ is (Forbes estimates Donald Trump’s net worth at around three to four billion. By contrast, Mr. Bloomberg’s wealth is estimated as 40 to sixty billion).

Using the wealth factor to compare the two men is important in as much as Mr. Trump makes it central to who he is (we are talking about someone who sued Forbes for underestimating his wealth). What’s particularly important here is not so much the net worth but how they made their money.

Let’s start with Mr. Trump, since he talks the most about his billions. Mr. Trump made it in real estate, an old-fashioned industry. Mr. Trump consistently brags about how he has the best buildings in the best city in the world, which is an indication of his superior intelligence and by extension his right to run the country.

However, there are several problems here. Firstly, a good portion of his wealth is inherited. In fairness, he’s built on what he’s inherited. However, his skill was not business management or creating something new. In his journey to more wealth, Mr. Trump needed to be bailed out from bankruptcy by his father on more than one occasion. As he’s argued that John McCain shouldn’t be a war hero because he was captured by the enemy, we should ask if he’s really a businessman as he’s needed to be bailed out on several occasions. Let’s not forget that Mr. Trump is associated with business that are considered easy to make money in, namely real estate (buy land, they’re not making more of it) and casinos (the house always wins). Mr. Trump’s genius is not management but producing hype. His real asset is his brand, where people pay to put the Trump name on their buildings. While a good brand is an asset (I’m part of the brand building business), there’s a problem in that brands can be damaged easily – think of Trump University.

Mr. Bloomberg has built a different type of business and while he was not born into poverty, Mr. Bloomberg did not inherit the wealth that Mr. Trump did. The original capital came from his stint at Salomon Brothers (It takes skills to build capital over a period of years in the investment business) and the genesis of what we call Bloomberg LP came from his insight that large finance houses would pay for top quality information delivered as quickly as possible. Mr. Bloomberg understood that this could be done through the development of the right technology. What we call Bloomberg LP a precursor to today’s tech unicorns. The testament to Mr. Bloomberg’s competence as manager and business builder can be seen from the growth of Bloomberg LP from nothing much to a multibillion company employing 20,000 plus people in 167 countries.

The left wing has mistakenly used Mr. Trump’s famous managerial incompetence to discredit the notion that CEO’s can become successful Presidents. In Mr. Trump, America did not get a businessman or managerial genius – they got a bullshit artist who got promoted beyond his level of competence. By contrast, Mr. Bloomberg is a real businessman who has built something. Mr. Bloomberg had an idea and executed it. A person who can come up with fresh ideas and execute them is the very type of person the world needs at its helm.

That’s not all that favours Mr. Bloomberg. He was a competent Mayor of New York, which is a complex global city. While Mr. Bloomberg is by no means a saint (there are reports that Bloomberg was a bit of a fraternity and there have been law suites leveled at Bloomberg LP for sexual harassment), Mr. Bloomberg has kept his private life just that – private.

Mr. Bloomberg has at the very least pretended to respect the rules, something which Mr. Trump seems to ignore. Mr. Bloomberg left the company he founded to become Mayor of New York and there is no indication that there was any peep of Bloomberg LP benefiting from Mr. Bloomberg’s position as Mayor.

The area in which Mr. Bloomberg should be applauded for is keeping his family out of his business and his political offices. Mr. Bloomberg’s second daughter, Georgina, who is an established equestrian in her own right (she overcame a spinal disorder) and is reported to have said that “Having the last name Bloomberg sucks.”) Mr. Bloomberg’s kids have not used their name as an asset to be milked for its worth.

Perhaps the best thing about Mr. Bloomberg is that he knows how to hurt Mr. Trump’s ego. When Mr. Trump tried to mock him for his short stature, Mr. Bloomberg hit back, talking about the Occupant’s fake tan and fake hair – the message could not be clearer – Mr. Bloomberg may be a short man but his achievements are gigantic – Mr. Trump by contrast is a weak and insecure man using political office to hide his obvious flaws.

America, which became the world’s greatest power in history on the premise that an individual could succeed on his or her own talents regardless of birth, stature or religion, should be lead by a man who built great things through his talent rather than continue to stick with a man so weak that he can’t take on anyone stronger than a 16-year-old with Asperger. 

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Maira Gall