The founder of his own media company, Bloomberg has been a Democrat, Republican, and independent. In the eyes of his admirers, it’s precisely his lack of partisan attachments that makes him so appealing. He represents a particular kind of nonideological, technocratic politics that has a foothold in both parties, but a stranglehold on neither.

Bloomberg would make a credible candidate, and could potentially succeed where other third-party candidates have failed. But the deck is stacked against any independent candidate, no matter how wealthy, and Bloomberg will need to make up his mind soon if he intends to be taken seriously.

One man who will be watching today’s results from the New Hampshire presidential primary with particular interest is Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, who is mulling a third-party bid. Bloomberg launched yet another trial balloon last month, with supporters hinting to The New York Times that he might jump into the race if the Republicans pick Donald Trump or Ted Cruz and the Democrats back Bernie Sanders. He told the Financial Times Monday that he’s “looking at all the options” when asked about a run. “I find the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters,” Bloomberg said.

Thus, he’s a champion of stricter gun control and fighting climate change — with a stronger stance than many Democrats — but he’s also a backer of harsh policing. He’s a cheerleader for Wall Street, more blatantly than the Republicans, but was also a leading, and lonely, critic of the fast-food industry. He championed bike lanes before it was cool, and also broke New York’s bus-drivers union. There’s no way to categorize him on the conventional left-right spectrum.

In theory, that’s just what Americans say they want in a divided Washington. The problem is that partisan politics, for all its sordidness, is what Americans actually want, as a string of elections going back 200 years demonstrates. Ideology may be a dirty word to businessmen like Bloomberg, but many voters seem to want that quality in their politicians. The exceptions, like Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, get so much attention because they are precisely that — exceptions.


The practical barriers to independent candidates are also daunting: Getting on the ballot in all 50 states takes Herculean effort, and third-party candidates don’t get an automatic invitation to the presidential debates. Social media — and the old-fashioned, paid kind of media — mean Bloomberg wouldn’t necessarily have trouble communicating directly to voters, but assembling a political operation also takes time.


The ordeal of running in primaries is itself an advantage for the party candidates. The candidates the Globe has endorsed for president, Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and John Kasich for the Republicans, have spent the last year listening to voters and honing their campaign platform.

Donald Trump has certainly shown that a candidate willing to spend the money can grab the attention of the voters; Bloomberg, in his reluctance to definitively enter the race now, casts doubt on his seriousness as a candidate. As both a practical and political matter, if Bloomberg really wants to win — and to convince Americans he’s the real deal, and not just a spoiler — he’ll need to jump in soon. The longer he waits, the more it will appear that he’s trying to take a rich man’s shortcut to the White House. By the beginning of March, the field in both parties should be reasonably clear; if Bloomberg is to run to win, he’ll need to decide by then.