Inside the mind of Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City:

Could the Democratic nomination really go to Barack Obama – you know, middle name Hussein?

And could the Republican nomination really go to Mike Huckleberry? I mean Huck Finn; I mean Huckabee. Whatever.

This is the best the two parties can do? In which case, maybe I should reactivate my own presidential ambitions – because I can beat those two, running right down the middle, in between the Third Worlder and the Bible Belter.

I’ll admit it: I have an ego to feed. That’s why I called my company “Bloomberg.” So yeah, if a Bloomberg terminal is good enough to sit inside the headquarters of every big company in America, then why not a Bloomberg inside the White House?

In addition to being the two-term mayor of the largest city in America, I’ve been raising my national profile. I speak all over the country, and I give away lots of money. In fact, since I own one of the few media outlets that’s actually hiring reporters these days, I’m getting a strange new respect from the chattering classes.

For a while, though, it seemed that my White House hopes were sadly thwarted. If the major-party nominees were going to be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton – well, there’s just not enough political space for another New Yorker.

But if it’s Obama and Huckabee? And it’s not just that those guys are low-rent. Look at the lack of confidence in the overall system: Both the president and Congress are competing to see who can have the lower approval rating. Now I know how Ross Perot felt in 1992; I’m smarter than these clowns, so why aren’t I president?

Everyone knows I’m the best qualified for the job. I’m pro-business – not because I sat around reading Adam Smith or Ayn Rand – but because I actually built a business. Republicans respect big money; I make Mitt Romney look like a piker.

And as for Democrats, the upper crust of the party has completely bought into globalism; they will appreciate my international sophistication. I have played it smart; I endorsed Joe Lieberman for re-election in Connecticut last year, so the neocons like me. And yet at the same time, since I’m basically an open-borders guy, I am separate and distinct from the yahoo right wing.

Doug Bailey, the veteran Republican consultant, has been pitching me on an independent candidacy through his Unity ‘08 operation. And now here’s a front-page piece in the New York Sun citing experts who think I could win as many as 312 electoral votes – 42 more than needed to win the presidency. No point in paying for a landslide!

And now I see Pete Wehner, the ex-Bush II White House aide, sending out a blast e-mail, in which he trashes Obama and Huckabee.

About Obama, Wehner says, “His foreign policy experience is extremely thin – and on the major issue confronting America, the war against militant Islam, he is manifestly weak. On virtually every front in the war against jihadism, he would pull back.”

OK, maybe that criticism is to be expected. But here’s Wehner on his fellow Republican Huckabee: “Foolishness” appears in the headline, and then Wehner describes Huckabee’s new article in Foreign Affairs magazine as “stunningly silly, misguided, and unfortunately for Huckabee, deeply revealing.”

So if that’s the choice, Obama vs. Huckabee, wouldn’t Wehner, and a lot of others, want another name on the ballot? Mike Bloomberg!

Not everyone in this country is looking for a president who is pro-choice on abortion, pro-gay rights, and pro-globalism on trade, immigration and environmental protection. But if I run, I’ll have a solid base on both coasts, and then I’ll buy enough of the rest in the middle. That checkbook approach worked for me before, here in New York City.