Visiting Column #37 -- What Exactly Will Mike "Get Done"?

As this is being written, there have been two 2020 events, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which have combined to accomplish pretty much nothing, except to enrich 7,559 campaign strategists.

Well, maybe not "nothing." They have shown that Joe Biden's "time has went", as he would probably say, and that Elizabeth Warren is capable of creating pretty much zero enthusiasm, including in a state next to the one in which she lives.

One interesting aspect of the past few weeks, though, is actually about a candidate who was not a participant in either the caucuses or the primary.

I refer, of course, to the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who is running for president on sort of a delayed-video, or instant replay model.  That is, he is not putting his name on any of the earlier primary ballots, preferring to wait until around Super Tuesday, when there will be a bunch of primaries.

He is, however, engaged in a huge branding blitz.

About every thirteen seconds, anyone watching TV can expect to see a commercial for the Bloomberg candidacy, telling the viewer what a terrible guy President Trump is, and then using the tag line "Mike will get it done."

Now, exactly what Mike will "get done" is not really explicit in the ads, and I confess that I fast-forward past most of them any more.  I have already made up my own mind about President Trump and don't really need Bloomberg's flacks to tell me what to think about him.

And to be fair, the purpose of the tag line is to portray the generally unknown (outside New York) Bloomberg as a guy who "does things", as opposed to one who just talks about it.  A guy who actually does do things, you see, would stand in stark contrast to pretty much all the other candidates, none of whom has a great track record at doing anything but talking. 

About the only one who has "run anything" is Pete Buttigieg, who is the mayor of a little town in Indiana, and even the people in Fort Wayne don't think he has been effective.  Most of the rest are U.S. Senators, and let's face it they talk.  A lot.  Doing?  Not so much.

But I'm still struggling with the "what" part of Bloomberg's message, as in "what needs to get done."

I say that because, as a voter in a swing state, the things I care about are already getting done -- not by people in Bloomberg's party, the Democrats, but by the current president.  Take health care for veterans and reforming the VA hospital system, for example.  I care about that.  President Trump is getting it done already.  I don't need for "Mike" to do anything, nor would I (or most vets) risk letting someone new change the trajectory of reform.

How about the southern border?  Drugs, human traffickers and gangs were flooding over, along with border-jumpers who chose not to go through the legal pathway to residence here.  Well, hundreds of miles of effective walls are being put up as we speak, by a guy who knows how to build things.  He is also the president now, by the way. 

The Democrat candidates all raised their hands to say that not only are they fine with open borders, but they want all those people to get free health care at citizen-taxpayers' expense.  Bloomberg is a Democrat, too, and by not participating in the debates until now he was spared having to make that choice to put his hand up.  But we know how the current president feels, and what he is doing to protect us.  That's already "getting done", so I don't think I want to see what Mike would do differently.

Second Amendment rights?  Yeah, that's really scary, because I don't know what old Mike thinks he would want to "get done" on that one.  Based on his record as mayor, I think he's more likely to send around the Army to confiscate every weapon he can find in the hands of private citizens.  The current president is a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment.  I think I'll stay that course.

Trade?  Let's see, President Trump's predecessors negotiated a series of deals that were embarrassingly deferential to Europe, to China, to Mexico and Canada, and which gave the USA no leverage to prevent jobs from fleeing overseas and to stop exacerbating our trade deficit.  Trump's approach?  The "big stick" policy -- mess with the USA, and we'll slap tariffs on your products and grind your economy into the ground.  It's the golden rule of economics -- he who has the gold makes the rules -- and we're the buyers.

Since Trump's anti-swamp, America First trade approach is based differently from his conciliatory predecessors and is actually working, it makes no sense to "get done" whatever Bloomberg thinks needs to get done on trade.  And we could go on.

Mike Bloomberg has yet to face the media, although he'll be on the next debate upcoming.  It is really hard to imagine he will perform well on it, though -- this is the guy who literally was asked by some guy seeking a picture in a "say cheese" moment to "say 'stop and frisk'," after which Bloomberg stopped, posed and said "stop and frisk."  Hard to think even the leftist moderators are going to go easy on him.

The main thing, of course, is that all the things that fall into the "get it done" category are already getting done by President Trump, and they're getting done the way the USA needs to have them "gotten done", that is, properly.  There is nothing out there that America needs to have Michael Bloomberg do that isn't already being done, and being done better than he would.

OK, stopping us from buying 24-ounce sodas.  Trump's leaving that one for Mike.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton