Can Bloomberg's billions buy him love at ballot box?

Opinion Journal:

The first Presidential nominating contests are only beginning, but already New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is stealing attention as a potential third-party candidate. We trust he's read the history of what usually happens to such candidates--they lose, finishing essentially as spoilers.

The billionaire mayor has no shortage of cheerleaders for such a contest, including his staff, assorted consultants, and even the usually hard-headed editors at the New York Sun and New York Post. He's rich enough to get on the ballot in every state, and has been widely quoted as saying he'd spend $500 million or more if he did decide to run. That's more than enough to get his message out, if he can find one.

So far that's the rub, though presumably the Democrat turned Republican turned Independent would try to position himself as a kind of postpartisan progressive "centrist." Along those lines, this Sunday the mayor is ostentatiously attending a conference of other self-styled centrists at the University of Oklahoma. Hosted by former Democratic Senator David Boren, the session will include the likes of former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, current Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (who famously predicted the "surge" in Iraq would be a disaster), and others who argue that the main poison in our politics is too much partisanship. With so many voters soured on Washington, there's a market for this kind of Rodney King can't-we-all-just-get-along politics.

The question is how big that market would be on Election Day, and our guess is not very. Most third-party candidates have run on some issue or cause that the main parties had ignored. Lincoln and the Republicans supplanted the Whigs in 1860 over slavery, Teddy Roosevelt promised a return to progressive Republicanism in 1912, Strom Thurmond represented Southern segregationists in 1948, and even Ross Perot had the budget deficit in 1992.

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A passion for moderation and compromise is pretty thin when it comes to motivating voters. But that appears to be the theme of the conference intended to be a springboard to a candidacy. It appears to be a gathering of those hoping for a VP place on the Bloomberg ticket. None of them poll above asterisk status at this point. Since there is no compelling theme beyond moderation and compromise, and no groundswell of grass roots passion for this theme, it appears to be a gathering of those cynical enough to believe that a big advertising budget can create a passion for moderation and compromise. Maybe there is a market for the Great American Moderates, but publishers have not found it.

Mort Kondracke has a top ten list for the moderates. The chances are remote that many could be accomplished. Democrats are too bought by the teachers unions to allow "world-class public education." They are now hell bent on rolling back standards and laws to hold schools accountable. They also oppose anything other than taxes increases to "fix" Social Security, despite the math that shows that the program is unsustainable unless taxes are raised to a level that is unsustainable. These are just a couple of his 10 issues that moderates don't have a plan to solve.