Talk/Talk: The (Real) Bloomberg Story

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, THE (REAL) BLOOMBERG STORY. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, September 21, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show," "Meet the Press" and "The McLaughlin Group."

Newman: OK. But everybody knows that. The issue is how you get there. How? With more democracy. By bringing more people into the process. You see, that's actually the Mike Bloomberg story. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell it.

Salit: Nobody does. Except us.

Newman: That's right. Now, what is that story? It's the story of how 59,000 votes on the Independence Party line in 2001 made him mayor of New York City.

Salit: It's the story of how he had to turn to the independents to give him his margin of victory.

Newman: A new political force, brought in by an expansion of democracy, put him in office. And that's the very point. When you bring the people in, when you expand democracy, they make the right choice. In a very partisan town, we elected a nonpartisan mayor. And he's been a very good mayor, because he's not a partisan. But today Bloomberg won't tell the story of how he got elected.

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

And catch a glimpse of the independent Mike Bloomberg at the top of The Hankster -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Keynote speech at the New York City Independence Party's 2004 Anti-Corruption Award dinner.