MONEY TALKS: Trump and Bloomberg are both billionaires, but the similarities end there.
You’ve got to hand it to Donald Trump (yes, you read that right). While making one of his bombastic boasts during that first Republican debate last month, he described the country's pay-to-play system of politics with welcome candor.
“I will tell you that our system is broken,” Trump said. “I gave to many people before this — before two months ago I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That’s a broken system.”
Yup, that’s how it works all right. If you give, you get. The Koch Brothers, labor unions, the Sheldon Adelsons and Trump himself donate millions, even billions, to advance candidates. They want access and influence. And they get it.
That is a central reason for the builder’s current popularity: Supporters claim he’s so wealthy he will be immune to special interests. And his serial outrageous statements — and his aggressive rejection of “political correctness” — play neatly into the same theme: He’s so wealthy, so independent, he just doesn’t give a damn.
It makes theoretical sense: With money having taken over politics, maybe the answer is a man so rich he can’t be bought.
A comparison with another multi-billionaire who entered politics — Michael R. Bloomberg — might be instructive. He made the same argument Trump is making now when he left the company he founded to run for mayor in 2001.
He would be nobody’s toady, he said. He wouldn’t be obligated to the many lobbyists who push and pull at elected officials as if they were pieces of taffy — special interests ranging from the powerful teachers unions and the health-care industry to the city’s many racial and ethnic factions.
They are forces to contend with, pressuring even candidates who count on the city's public financing system, which limits contributions and spending. (Bloomberg opted out, which freed him to spend as much of his own money as he wanted.)
That freedom to do the right thing, the entrenched powers be damned, was central to Bloomberg’s appeal , and it fuels him still in nationwide and global crusades for gun control and public health.
Would Trump be the same if, and the mind reels at the thought, he won the White House? The easy guess: No. One person’s independence is another’s bludgeon.
Love him or hate him, Bloomberg was rooted. Though free of the typical political obligations, he was not free of a sense of responsibility to New York. That came from within. He knew who he was: a reasonable guy who had made good, who was chronically impatient with bureaucratic stupidity and willing to delegate to strong lieutenants.
His most audacious innovations during his first term: to widely expand the city’s smoking ban and centralize control of the schools under the mayor after years of governance by a discredited political committee. Important, but hardly shocking.
Bloomberg’s got an ego, of course — he built a financial-services and media conglomerate with his name all over it. He’s willful, impatient and has a crass sense of humor. But he’s always seemed guided by an inner compass.
Trump has rather different ideas: building walls at borders, uprooting 11 million immigrants (never mind how), bombing “the hell” out of Mideast oilfields to strike at ISIS, overturning Obamacare.
Bloomberg infuriated many New Yorkers with his stop-and-frisk policy, his fondness for development, his failure to deal with a disastrous detention system.
But compare that with describing Mexican immigrants as rapists, equating attending military school with serving in the armed forces, being pro-choice one day, pro-life another. You can’t.
No two people could be less alike. Bloomberg, who grew up in a striving middle-class family that instilled strong altruistic values in him, is a self-made success who ultimately (kicking and screaming) recognized the importance of restraint.
Trump, who grew up privileged and got a jump-start from his wealthy developer father, has no second gear. Trump so revels in Trump, it’s a wonder he doesn’t have his name tattooed on his forehead beneath that glowing pompadour. Bloomberg and Trump are two sides of the very expensive coin. Bloomberg was free to institute tough reforms without petty pandering; Trump feels freer than anyone to offend or pander to whomever he wants, brazenly, and assumes he will suffer no repercussions. It’s time voters who admire Trump for his money realize that the answer to a broken political system is not just a super-rich guy. What matters is not the size of a candidate’s bank account but who that person fundamentally is.
With apologies to the late Lloyd Bentsen: Donald Trump, you are no Mike Bloomberg.