Recently, there has been a lot of hubbub over the possibility of a independent run by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Unlike Giuliani, the current mayor operates with a 70% approval rating and has shown a disdain for Washington's inability to get things done, a sentiment that rings with many voters.
As Dick Morris and others have pointed out, there is considerable attraction to a candidate who is both fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Given that he can finance his own campaign, fundraising and late-entry are not an issue.
If Bloomberg decides to get in, there is a natural and powerful choice for his VP, creating a ticket with the potential to turn the 2008 Presidential race on its head. If you haven't guessed his/her identity already, find out below the fold...
That VP choice would be none other than the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who could resist such a combination?
Impossible? Not hardly. Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution states:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
The Constitution levies no such restriction of natural-born citizenship on the Vice-President. Nor does it contain a requirement that the Vice-President be eligible for the office of president. In fact, until the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, the Constitution did not even clearly articulate the Vice-President could assume the office of the President should it become vacant (although they did in practice, even without explicit constitutional authority).
These two represent the new trend in local and regional politics, implementing creative initiatives rather than waiting for Washington to get out in front. The fact is, thirty states had already raised the minimum-wage before this Congress finally got around to it.
Would this be a ticket Kossacks could get behind? And which party would be hurt most by a Bloomberg-Scwarzenegger run?