Bloomberg is coming

“N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg attacks Washington, stokes the center

By Dan Balz

Washington Post Staff Writer 
Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 10:37 PM

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long hungered to be at the center of the national debate, to be regarded as one of New York's greatest mayors, even to be seen as a possible president. If he becomes a candidate in 2012, and that is still a decided long shot, his speech Wednesday may be seen as the first volley in the battle.

In the guise of offering a blueprint to fix the broken economy, Bloomberg offered a withering critique of the broken politics practiced in Washington and Albany. The politician who started his career as a Democrat, became a Republican to run for mayor and then announced that he was an independent, took aim at left and right with equal abandon.

He attacked the "ideologues on the left" for clinging to the belief that taxing and spending can restore prosperity and for holding a government-knows-best approach to creating jobs. He attacked "ideologues on the right" for entrusting all faith in the free market and writing off any significant role for government in shaping the environment in which the economy can flourish.

"For New York City to continue our growth, we need our federal and state governments to chart a middle way - between a government that would wash its hands of the problem and one that seeks to supplant the private sector; between a government that would stand on the sidelines and one that would take over the game," he said in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, according to a text of his prepared remarks.

Bloomberg identified the symptoms of dysfunctional politics: partisan gridlock, political pandering, legislative influence-peddling, finger-pointing, blame games and endless attacks. Democrats, he said, lost the 2010 elections for the same reasons Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008. They "spent more time and energy conducting partisan warfare than forging centrist solutions to our toughest economic problems."”