Without more than $50 billion to his name, Bloomberg would almost certainly be running a campaign like another late-entrant, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who hasn’t been heard from since filing for the New Hampshire primary a couple of months ago.

Bloomberg’s political strategy has always been built on the belief that nothing succeeds like excess. If he wants it, he can buy it, and money is no object.

It’s a free country, and Bloomberg can spend as much money as he likes on whatever suits his fancy. No one should try to stop him from doing it through campaign-finance laws or other rules. In the scheme of things, lavishing tens of millions on your own presidential campaign is probably worthier than lavishing it on private islands, antique car collections, or yachts.

But Bloomberg 2020 is still an affront to small-d democratic sensibilities, a tribute not to his superior political skills or messaging compared with the other candidates, but his access to a personal bank account that the rest of them lack.

The level of his spending is truly astonishing—Croesus goes all in on Super Tuesday. He’s spent more than $300 million on various forms of advertising. By the end, he’s going to make the profligate self-funder Tom Steyer—who managed to pointlessly buy himself onto the Democratic debate stage and won about 1.7 percent of the popular vote in Iowa—look like a spendthrift. He’s promising to double his spending after the delayed, inconclusive Iowa caucuses results.

Bloomberg is running a presidential campaign that Curtis LeMay would love, carpet-bombing the airwaves every single day. He’s single-handedly changed the market for TV ads in many places in the country by soaking up so much TV time. He spent $10 million on a Super Bowl spot, or about half of what Joe Biden raised in the entire fourth quarter.

This is the Bloomberg way. He spent a quarter-of-a-billion dollars to become and stay New York mayor for three terms. He doled out $100 million on his last campaign alone, outspending his hapless rival, city comptroller William Thompson, by 14-1 and still barely eking out a victory. When it looked closer than expected, what did Bloomberg do? Dump money on even more last-minute radio and TV advertising, of course.

He was only eligible for a third term because he got a term-limit law changed, with the support of charities that he happened to make generous donations to. The brilliant historian Fred Siegel archly observed, “The traditional politicians are bought by special interest groups, but Bloomberg buys special interest groups.”

He’s replicating this approach in his presidential campaign. Many of his endorsers among mayors around the country just happen to represent cities that have enjoyed his largesse.

What’s wrong with all this, beyond the cynicism of thinking everything has a price tag? Maybe Bloomberg is right, that trying to go in and convince voters of your appeal at town hall events and meet-and-greets in places like Iowa and New Hampshire is for suckers. Certainly, all the candidates might wish they had spent less time in Iowa the past 12 months, given its caucus-night meltdown.

But there is much to be said for grassroots politics. It forces candidates to take account, up close and personal, of what their voters believe and want. As president, Abraham Lincoln devoted serious time to meeting with random people who showed up to see him, in what he called “public-opinion baths.” Lincoln believed these wearisome encounters served “to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage, out of which I sprang, and which at the end of two years I must return.”

The candidate who does dozens upon dozens of these events must have the ability to inspire and impress, think on his feet, show endless patience and stamina. If he’s not up for it, or is a pretender, he will inevitably be exposed. Surely one reason that Joe Biden had such a lackluster finish in Iowa is that he was tested in this crucible and founding wanting. Through its rigors, this kind of campaigning also produces, when a candidate truly finds a way to click, phenoms deeply bonded with their supporters like Barack Obama and Donald Trump (a semi-self-funder, but also a powerful grassroots candidate).

In comparison to everyone else out on the early-state hustings, Bloomberg is a Wizard of Oz candidate, shielded and inflated by his TV ads.

Another advantage of the traditional approach is that anyone can do it. Peter Buttigieg, the former major of a small Indiana town whom no one had heard of a year ago, finished at the top of the Iowa caucuses through sheer talent, tireless work and clever messaging. He didn’t have to amass a personal fortune to make a venture in presidential politics, although he’s been an adept fundraiser, exactly because he’s connected with people.

All this said, perhaps Bloomberg will break all the rules and be the last man standing between Bernie Sanders and the cusp of the American presidency, in the form of a major party nomination. Then, Bloomberg’s spending might look to a lot of Democrats like a public service. There is also no denying that Bloomberg is a genuinely talented man, which is why his money hasn’t been wasted like that of countless other self-funders and instead actually won him elections.

But this style of campaigning shouldn’t be the norm. If Bloomberg succeeds, he will enrich many TV stations, consultants, pollsters and campaign workers, but impoverish our politics.



