Others who will be at the Jan. 7 session at the University of Oklahoma said that if the likely nominees of the two parties do not pledge to "go beyond tokenism" in building an administration that seeks national consensus, they will be prepared to back Bloomberg or someone else in a third-party campaign for president.

The list of attendees suggests the group could muster the financial and political firepower to make the threat of such a candidacy real.

Conveners of the meeting include such prominent Democrats as former senators Sam Nunn of Georgia, Charles Robb of Virginia and David Boren of Oklahoma, and former presidential candidate Gary Hart. Republican attendees are to include Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, former party chairman Bill Brock, former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

Boren, who will host the meeting at the university, where he is president, said: "It is not a gathering to urge any one person to run for president, or to say there necessarily ought to be an independent option. But if we don't see a refocusing of the campaign on a bipartisan approach, I would feel I would want to encourage an independent candidacy."

Others who have indicated they plan to attend the one-day session include William Cohen, former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the second Clinton administration; Alan Dixon, former Democratic senator from Illinois; Bob Graham, former Democratic senator from Florida; Jim Leach, former Republican congressman from Iowa; Susan Eisenhower, a political consultant and granddaughter of former President Eisenhower; David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency; and Edward Perkins, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Bloomberg, a former Democrat who was elected mayor of New York as a Republican, left the GOP over the summer to become an independent. While disclaiming any plan to run for president in 2008, he has continued to fuel speculation by traveling widely and speaking out on domestic and international issues. The mayor, a billionaire many times over, presumably could self-finance even a late-starting candidacy.

"As mayor, he has seen far too often how hyperpartisanship in Washington has gotten in the way of making progress on a host of issues," said Bloomberg's press secretary, Stu Loeser. "He looks forward to sitting down and discussing this with other leaders."

Until plans for the meeting were disclosed, the most concrete public move toward any kind of independent candidacy was by Unity08, a group planning an online nominating convention to pick either an independent candidate or a ticket combining a Republican and a Democrat. The sponsors, an eclectic mix of consultants who have worked for candidates ranging from Democrat Jimmy Carter to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., have not aligned with a specific prospect.

Some people with high-level political and governmental credentials are moving to put muscle behind the new effort. A letter from Nunn and Boren sent to those who plan to attend the Jan. 7 session said "our political system is, at the least, badly bent and many are concluding that it is broken at a time ... America must lead boldly at home and abroad. Partisan polarization is preventing us from uniting to meet the challenges that we must face if we are to prevent further erosion in America's power of leadership and example."

At the session, Boren said, participants will try to draft a statement on such issues as the need to "rebuild and reconfigure our military forces" and restoring U.S. credibility in the world.

"Today, we are a house divided," the letter said. "We believe that the next president must be able to call for a unity of effort by choosing the best talent available — without regard to political party — to help lead our nation."

Boren said he and Nunn, who often collaborated when they headed the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, respectively, invited other moderates with whom they had served and found almost everyone was willing to attend.

"Our hope is that the candidates will respond with their own specific ideas about how to pull the country together, not just aim at getting out their own polarized base," Boren said.

"But we will have a couple months before the nominees will be known, and we can judge in that time what their response will be."

Boren said the meeting was announced before Thursday's Iowa caucuses "because we don't want anyone to think this was a response to any particular candidate or candidates."

"Electing a president based solely on the platform or promises of one party is not adequate for this time," Boren said. "Until you end the polarization, and have bipartisanship, nothing else matters, because one party simply will block the other from acting."

Danforth, who has written critically about the impact of religious conservatives on the Republican Party, said he remains a Republican but finds little cause for optimism among the current GOP candidates. "My party is appealing to a real meanness," he said, "and an irresponsible sense of machismo in foreign policy. I hope it will be less extreme, but I'm an American before I'm a Republican."

Cohen said his emphasis would be on the issues, rather than a candidacy, adding that he and Nunn would co-sponsor a series of "dialogues" on key topics, aiming to build planks for a possible consensus platform for the next president.

"The important goal all of us share," Cohen said, "is to get government back to the center."

Nunn described Bloomberg as "an enormously capable man," but said, "I've made no decision who I'm going to support. Most of us hope to shape the Republican or Democratic sides' response, but who knows where this is going to go? I think the country's at the tipping point, and it's going to take a lot more understanding by the electorate for anybody to be able to lead."

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