McCain, Obama Left No Place for Bloomberg

If Rudy and Hillary were the frontrunners, Michael Bloomberg wouldn't have ruled out an independent bid for the presidency, as he did today, writes Jon Meacham of Newsweek.  But John McCain and Barack Obama, the putative nominees, have a lock on the “novelty narrative,” so the billionaire mayor—who's been successively a Democrat, then Republican, then independent—made “the wise business decision to save his money.”

But don’t rule him out as a running mate for either party’s nominee, writes Meacham. Bloomberg’s bipartisanship “will be very attractive as the months go by,” he predicts. In his op-ed piece in the Times, Bloomberg said he would support a candidate who steers "away from ideology and toward common sense," which Meacham interprets as an invitation to Obama and McCain to seek an endorsement or offer him a place on the ticket. (More Michael Bloomberg stories.)