Vail Daily column: A sane choice just in case

A guy who knows Vail well may run for president.

No, no, no. Not Ross Perot. Sheesh. Been there, done that.

Michael Bloomberg. Tycoon. Former mayor of New York City. Vail second-home owner.

Personally, I like it.

If my Republican friends show they’ve truly lost their minds and nominate Donald Trump, who isn’t even a Republican, never mind conservative.

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If my Democratic friends go even more insane and nominate Bernie Sanders, who goes well beyond liberal and isn’t even a Democrat.

Well, what are we to do?

Bloomberg offers centrists, mushy middle types, compromisers, people seeking actual problem solving in the real world — people I consider rational — well, he offers us a last life-saving ring of sanity.

The multi-billionaire businessman and pretty good mayor offers plenty for hardcore conservatives and liberals alike to pooh-pooh. Which is fine, nutty as each pole has become.

Listen, pretty good may be as good a choice as we’ll get. I mean, look at this field. The Republicans’ most logical choices look like they have no chance. And the Democrats offer us Hillary Clinton (yuck) or Bernie Sanders (completely nuts).

A Bloomberg adviser posits him as a “non-ideological, bipartisan, results-oriented” alternative to what we have now.

Sounds good to me.

I don’t trust Clinton. Sorry, I just don’t. Trump is a joke, though this isn’t at all a funny one. Sanders presents a too-good-to-be-true con that we can have nirvana for nuthin’. Ted Cruz? Oh, dear. He’s no choice, either, unless you believe a Christian version of Iran make sense. Yes, I realize whole states do.

If we think about what independent presidential candidates really do, well, I do think H.W. Bush would have won a second term in 1992 had Ross Perot kept his ego in check and stayed out. Ralph Nader bled away Al Gore’s chances in 2000. Well, along with a partisan U.S. Supreme Court. But no Ralph and no opportunity for the Supreme Court to settle things.

Bloomberg most likely would take the most votes from the Democrats. But I don’t believe he’d stay in the race if Hillary prevailed as her party’s nominee. If it’s Sanders and Trump, which I still doubt — even Democrat and Republican primary voters can’t possibly be that stupid, can they? — Bloomberg will have a great chance of winning the general election.

He walks a line as a fiscal conservative and social liberal. Hmmm, that’s me, probably you and the majority of people I know. But only about half of us who can vote do vote, and the populist, ideological, partisan, one-issue types in each party will do what they do, too. And a much higher percentage of the true believers vote.

Still, I’m looking forward to what Bloomberg decides to do in March, when we should have a little better sense of how crazy the Republicans and Democrats turn out to be.

My own nuttiness kind of favors a direct Vail connection to a president again, though.

Anyone up for another stint as the Western White House?

Publisher Don Rogers can be reached at drogers@vaildaily.com and 970-748-2920.