Noah Millman

Reform Versus Resistance In GOP Health Care Politics

The Romney/Bloomberg Dichotomy

By Noah Millman • July 10, 2012, 2:38 PM

Apropos of Scott Galupo’s “how did it come to this” question about the Romney nomination, I think it’s worth comparing and contrasting public and elite attitudes toward Mitt Romney and Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg is vastly, enormously more wealthy than Romney. Like, about two orders of magnitude wealthier. Romney’s wealth is sufficient to buy himself a seat at any table. Bloomberg’s wealth is sufficient to buy the table.

Romney made his money the new-fashioned way, playing the game of modern finance capitalism. One can debate whether this game mostly serves the cause of making capitalism more efficient or whether this game mostly consists of tax and regulatory arbitrage and rent-extraction – it’s easy to come up with anecdotes for either case – but the point is: he played the game, and it’s a money game, nothing more.

Bloomberg, by contrast, was more of a classic entrepreneur. He developed a service that proved invaluable to the growing hoards of new-style financiers, then sold that service in large volume for a substantial profit, then parlaying this asset into an empire of related media properties.

Both Bloomberg and Romney ran for and won office in northeastern states as reform-minded, business-friendly executives who wouldn’t challenge the liberal cultural consensus but would provide a check on the liberal interest groups and public-sector unions that dominated the legislatures in their respective jurisdictions. Both, when originally elected, were seen as more moderate than their recent Republican predecessors (in Romney’s case, Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci; in Bloomberg’s case, Rudy Giuliani). Both passed the kinds of legislation that wins support from reform-minded centrists, Bloomberg in the area of education, Romney in the area of healthcare.

If all you knew was the above, you’d assume that, if anything, Bloomberg would be the more attractive candidate to a national GOP audience. Knowing personal details – Romney’s large family and personal religiosity versus Bloomberg’s bachelorhood and religious indifference – would probably swing things the other way, but not necessarily decisively; Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich each had many conservative admirers despite their operatic personal lives. But, of course, Mitt Romney set out partway through his single term as governor to remake himself into a fire-breathing movement conservative, to position himself for a run for the Republican Presidential nomination, and it is Bloomberg that has been the perpetual darling of centrist dreamers like Tom Friedman, and, to mainstream Republicans, is a symbol of out-of-touch elitism.

What conclusion do I draw from this comparison?

The take-no-prisoners defense of unbridled finance capitalism is not a feature of Mitt Romney. It’s a feature of modern American politics in general and of the conservative movement in particular. Mitt Romney did not run for governor of Massachusetts on a platform of promoting the interests of the wealthy above all else. He ran as a moderate, centrist, business-friendly custodian of the public fisc. Kind of like Michael Bloomberg. So expelling Mitt Romney will do nothing to change the fact that a critique of the financialization of American capitalism has barely begun anywhere in American politics.

If you want to change that, start supporting politicians who are known primarily for their opposition to Wall Street, even if they are not “sound” on other matters. One such is running for the Senate in Massachusetts right now.

Tagged Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, Mitt Romney, Scott Galupo.

9 Responses to The Romney/Bloomberg Dichotomy

Kieselguhr Kid says:

July 10, 2012 at 3:27 pm

As a son of Massachusetts, I challenge heartily the notion that Mitt Romney was seen as “more moderate” than Bill Weld, and I don’t even know where you got that idea. Romney’s voters were hoping for Weld II. And they hated Doherty, and were annoyed by the obvious panic of the unfortunately brain-dead Massachusetts Democratic Party”s panicking and trying to take away their right to vote for Mitt Romney instead of just deciding for themselves that the guy was a carpetbagging phony.

I was surprised by your conclusion; it’s not obvious that Romney is running on a “defense of unbridled finance capitalism” so much as that Obama is backing him into it: the Republican candidates were _attacking_ Obama for bailing out the banks (OK, they maybe were trying to have it both ways…) One might have gone the other way and looked not at finance but at Romney’s transformation into a red-meat conservative as the result of the decline of a certain kind of moderate northeast Republican (Weld, Collins, Chafee, Jeffords…). That would’ve ecouraged one to vote for candidates who seemed to be trying to revive that brand, although not “sound” in many other ways — and _that_ might’ve led you to the exact opposite conclusion as regards the Massachusetts Senate race.
Kieselguhr Kid says:

July 10, 2012 at 3:33 pm

Probably another important point: Bloomberg has a more-or-less consistent ideology but has swtiched parties often and recently (D to R to independent). Romney has a consistent party identification (going back a generation!) but has switched ideology. I don’t find the ascendance of one over the other particularly surprising, do you? Surely much of advancement in politics is simply connections to the party apparatus and people hate the outright apostate more than the occasional blasphemer.
Noah Millman says:

July 10, 2012 at 3:40 pm

KK: not being a son of Massachusetts, I may have that wrong. Weld was an fascinating politician, but I remember him presenting himself as a libertarian type – serious about cutting taxes and government and also serious about being a social liberal. Cellucci was described in national press as somewhat more conservative than Weld. And Romney was portrayed as a bland pro-business type – and as reassuring people that he wasn’t going to rock the boat on social issues. That reminded me – at the time – of the relationship between Bloomberg and Giuliani (who was also a liberal on social issues, you may recall, but was much more interesting and volatile than Bloomberg promised to be).

As for what Romney is running on: he’s not running on anything. But during the primaries, he was pushed – and not by Obama – to a more movement-conservative position on economic matters: across the board tax cuts, deregulation, etc.

I was making the argument you make about moderate northeastern Republicans back in the early 2000s, arguing that it was vital for the GOP to have both liberal and conservative wings, and arguing for supporting guys like Mitt Romney for governor for that very reason. But as you note, the Obama Administration has been very supportive of Wall Street – and the GOP has, contrary to your point about bailouts, generally taken Obama to task for being too hard on Wall Street, not for being too lenient. Yes, they are trying to have it both ways – they want to argue that they are against bailouts and they also want to argue against any restraint of the finance industry. And don’t forget, the bailout was passed under the Bush Administration. In the current climate, I don’t think the right choice is to support the most moderate, centrist Republican in order to try to broaden out the party and make it less right-wing. I think the right choice is to support candidates willing to challenge the consensus and move it in a certain direction. That’s how I feel on two topics – the role of Wall Street in the economy and America’s extremely forward defense posture – where I think the consensus is significantly off from where it should be. That’s a big part of the reason I blog here now – after all, I’m not a social conservative or a paleo-conservative or what-have-you.

Anyway, if you all knew that Romney was a soulless phony from the beginning, I wish you wouldn’t have elected him.
Scott Galupo says:

July 10, 2012 at 7:03 pm

KK: Romney said in 2003: “The classical Republican approach is to say you know what makes America so great is our great corporations. And if we just clear the decks so that corporations can be more successful and give them more money, and make it easier for them to succeed. Well, then we will do even better on the world stage. I don’t happen to subscribe to that traditional Republican caricature.”

I’m not a son of Massachusetts, either, but that doesn’t sound like Bill Weld to me.
Kieselguhr Kid says:

July 10, 2012 at 7:33 pm

Well, yeah, that reads wrong. I think when ROmney declared in MA, people seemed genuinely to feel like, jeez, this guy’s a phony (Bostonian). I dont think we thought he was a phony (). The guy was obviously a Utah resident moving back because he thought he had a shot and it pissed people off.

Then O’Brien (sorry, thought Doherty for a sec there) turned out to be awful — not Coakley awful, but think like that. So the Mass Democratic party panicked and sued to block the Romney candidacy, and that pissed everyone off.

Although, fairly, I think we all wanted a new Weld too. I was a hardcore liberal — maybe on of the few MA types not a Weld fan — but Wel’d grip on state politics was so strong that really the Democrats only ever ran Weld clones against him: guys like Bacharach were sidelined as pinkos. Weld always seems to me to be one of the great might-have-beens of modern US politics; blame Jesse Helms for the downfall of the Republican moderate, man.
Kieselguhr Kid says:

July 11, 2012 at 9:48 am

Scott — that’s pretty Weldian! Remember Bill Weld was the guy who, say, pushed for Massachusetts-only sanctions on Burma, and who happil told companies about their responsibilities to the state and to their communities — it was Bill Weld who made a hero of Malden Mills, before Bill Clinton did! He was pro-environmental regulation, too.

I recognize that there used to be a lot of highfalutin’ talk in Massachusetts, some of which leaked out elsewhere, about whther Bill Weld was a liberal or a conservative or a libertarian. Those positions are foolish; he was just Weldian. It was that mold that Romney tried very, very hard to fit.
Scott McConnell says:

July 12, 2012 at 11:00 am

Some other distinctions, in no particular order:
1)Bloomberg ran on a nearly ideologically neutral “improve education” platform, not a “I can fix the economy because I’m a great capitalist platform.”
2) Bloomberg has some cojones, as when he mounted a constitutional defense of the Ground Zero mosque, when there was no political capital to be gained in doing so.
(subset to the above: he said a neutral, “isn’t academic freedom important and wonderful” kind of thing at a 2006 graduation speech at U. Chicago, referencing Mearsheimer. Hardly a rousing endorsement, but no regular politician would go near something like that.
3) Probably slightly more difficult to run through a Republican primary gauntlet as a (not very practicing) Jew than as a Mormon, though a pretty close call.
4)Divorced v. family man, you mention.
5) Bloomberg’s life is too rich in every to subject himself to the demeaning grind of running in presidential primaries. By contrast, if you’ve done door to door missionary work, asking for votes in Iowa can hardly be demeaning.
KXB says:

July 12, 2012 at 2:03 pm

Bloomberg’s defense of the mosque has been traced to his own family’s experience in Boston. When he was a kid, the Bloomberg family found their dream home. Problem was that the owner would not sell to Jews. It did not matter that the family was not particularly religious. So, the Bloomberg family lawyer (non-Jew) bought it, and he turned around and sold it to the Bloombergs. The idea that someone can keep you from buying property or turning down your business, simply because of the religion you may or may not practice, left on impression on young Mike Bloomberg.
J Mann says:

July 17, 2012 at 10:15 am

Noah,

I’m not going to be articulate on this point, but I hope you stick with me. I’ll express it as best I can.

Elizabeth Warren? Are you saying that she has concrete ideas that you support, or do you just want to see people who think the current financial sector is bad and should be changed? Put another way, would you be equally happy with Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, or do you prefer one of the three? If the latter, which one and why?

I think the financial sector is corrupt with rent seeking. I’m open to the idea that it’s manipulating a systematic informational advantage over its own clients. But I don’t think that the Warren approach will produce much benefit, and I think its costs will be significant. From what I can see, Washington responds to problems with hastily cobbled together, complex regulatory directives like Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd Frank, which then metastasize into expanded bureaucracies that end up shutting down random parts of the economy without getting much done on restricting the actual problem.

I’m *almost* frustrated enough that the Ron Paul approach of just throwing chunks of the government off the side of the boat starts to appeal. The Warren approach of adding additional chunks on every time we’re unhappy doesn’t do much for me, at least if they’re added either by the current political process or even by Warren’s hypothetical free reign.