Mike Bloomberg's endorsement of Obama, which I learned about from the BBC Radio presenter who was interviewing me as he was handed a wire dispatch, is quite surprising to me. Bloomberg's a cautious type who doesn't endorse often. I'd say that for him to do this, he has to be at least 80 percent sure that Obama is going to win and he's backed the right horse.
Bloomberg cited Sandy as having influenced his thinking, and Obama's leadership on climate change. Truth be told, this is slightly amusing, and I'm sure my friends who work in climate change are already tweeting, "Bloomberg calls that leadership?" (These people are frustrated with Obama but obviously voting for him.)
But more telling what was Bloomy had to say about Mittens:
Mitt Romney too has a history of tackling climate change. As governor of Massachusetts, he signed on to a regional cap-and-trade plan designed to reducecarbon emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels. "The benefits (of that plan) will be long-lasting and enormous: benefits to our health, our economy, our quality of life, our very landscape. These are actions we can and must take now, if we are to have `no regrets' when we transfer our temporary stewardship of this Earth to the next generation," he wrote at the time.
He couldn't have been more right. But since then, he has reversed course, abandoning the very cap-and-trade program he once supported. This issue is too important. We need determined leadership at the national level to move the nation and the world forward.
I believe Mitt Romney is a good and decent man, and he would bring valuable business experience to the Oval Office. He understands that America was built on the promise of equal opportunity, not equal results. In the past he has also taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights, and health care. But he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the health-care model he signed into law in Massachusetts.
He's absolutely right. In other words, what many of us have been saying: Romney sold his soul to the right wing and has shown zero spine. Plus, I'm betting, here we have another instance of a fellow politician who's met Mitt Romney and who didn't like him. You'd have thought Romney would have sucked up to him, since Bloomberg is so much richer.
In any case, that's Bloomberg and Colin Powell now, the two most important independent validators in the country. Don't think his reach doesn't matter beyond New York.
