A Tale of Two Wealthy Candidates – Michael Bloomberg and Mitt Romney

One Will Use His Experience and Wealth to Build Better Cities; One will Use His Experience and Wealth to Build More Houses for Himself

While his popularity is currently very low, this Forum continues to believes that in the very near future New Yorkers will look back and marvel at how lucky they were to have had three mayoral terms from Michael Bloomberg.  As evidence of this consider what Mr. Bloomberg will do once he leaves office.

Angel Franco/The New York Times

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with his girlfriend, Diana L. Taylor, at an Association for a Better New York event. Mr. Bloomberg’s consulting group will include many of his best-known deputies.

Michael R. Bloomberg, determined to parlay his government experience and vast fortune into a kind of global mayoralty, is creating a high-powered consulting group to help him reshape cities around the world long after he leaves office.

And who will help him and how will this be paid for?

To build the new organization, paid for out of his own pocket, the billionaire mayor is taking much of his City Hall team with him: He has already hired many of his best-known and longest-serving deputies, promising them a chance to export the policies they developed in New York to far-flung places like Louisville, Ky., and Mexico City.

And contrast all of that with what Mitt Romney has done after leaving public life.  Mitt went back to serving on corporate boards, for big bucks of course, and went back to building massive homes in every state that he wants to live in or thinks he might want to live in.  He also goes on Fox News every now and then to lament the fact that he is not President, a lametation that he and he alone has.