President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg just took lunch together. Nothing too unusual about that, except that the White House is letting it be known that the president was very interested in what Bloomberg wants to do next. From the New York Times:
The lunch invitation is striking because Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Obama are thought not to be particularly close — nor to have an especially warm relationship. But the White House seems intent on courting Mr. Bloomberg.
Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said the lunch was part of a continuing dialogue that the president very much valued. Over the last two years, Mr. Obama has invited Mr. Bloomberg to play golf on Martha’s Vineyard and has dispatched Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Gracie Mansion to seek the mayor’s views on the economy.
Obama could, in theory, move Joe Biden to the State department and ask Bloomberg to join him on the 2012 ticket. But having raised this tantalising possibility I shall now dash it: Bloomberg is, as he says himself, very much a 'doer' rather than an adviser, and, famously, VPs don't get to 'do' very much. Biden has proved useful to the president, as an adviser, and also as the administration's schmoozer-in-chief, the man who does the ego-massaging of senators and congressmen, something that Obama has little taste for. I can't see Bloomberg being interested in either of those roles. No cabinet positions - with the exception of State, which wouldn't be Bloomberg's thing - are big enough. So I can't really see how Bloomberg would fit in. Treasury Secretary? World Bank? Or perhaps this was a conversation about 2016.
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