Tom Robbins notes what you may have missed regarding Bloomberg’s tenure now that the media has moved away from producing investigative journalism including NYC-TV, Stuyvesant Town and Mayoral Control. And then there’s this:

Actually, the joke’s on us. Even as newspaper fortunes sank in recent years, Bloomberg diligently courted media barons like Zuckerman, Murdoch, and Sulzberger, who he understood could make his life difficult if they so chose. Minus their support, as Joyce Purnick’s new Bloomberg biography proves, he would have never risked his end run around term limits. But he knew he had little to fear. As Purnick’s book also tells us, even his weekend disappearing act to go to his mansion in Bermuda has gone unchallenged.

“He does his radio show Friday morning,” a former aide told her. “At 11:05, the latest, he’s in his car. At 11:30 he is at the airport. His plane is in the air at 11:40, he’s in Bermuda at 2:10. He’s on the golf course by 2:30. . . . Almost every weekend, spring and fall.”

There’s a photo op that’s been even more closely guarded than military caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base: Mayor Mike, golf bags over his shoulder, striding across the tarmac toward Air Bloomberg.

But of course all that golfing had a purpose — like puff pieces about the mayor’s golf score. And then there are the I [heart] NY golf balls. And of course the mayor’s own vision of immigration reform . . .

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Since the beginning, the mayor and his editorial board lackeys argued that allowing the mayor to buy a third term constituted “more choices” or “more democracy”. Apparently that won’t also translate to more voters:

And a number of political analysts say that a predicted record-low turnout next Tuesday may jeopardize Mr. Bloomberg’s projected double-digit victory margin and even deliver him a third term with the lowest total vote received by a New York City mayor in nearly a century.

. . .

Mr. Bloomberg won in 2001 with 744,000 votes. He won a second term four years later with 753,000 of the 1.3 million cast. If as few as 20 percent of eligible voters turn out and Mr. Bloomberg wins even by a 10-percentage-point landslide, he would be re-elected with fewer than 500,000 votes — the lowest total since John F. Hylan’s in 1917.

That, by the way, was before women were allowed to vote and when the city’s population was smaller by nearly three million.

Which is all funny, in a ha-ha funny kind of way, as Clyde Haberman reports:

Buoyed by the polls and his own astonishing campaign spending, Mr. Bloomberg seems confident that four more years at City Hall are in the bag for him. Monday morning, he spoke about the New York that he envisioned in 2013, when his third term would end. This was in a speech to students attending New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.

He was pleased, he told them, to speak at a school named for “a distinguished three-term mayor.”

That produced thin laughter. Maybe the students had the Monday morning blahs. Or maybe they simply didn’t think it was funny.

“I thought I’d get a better laugh than that,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s not easy to do three-term jokes, folks.”

There’s a reason for that.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

It’s bad enough that your crappy ads are on every half inning, but this, too? Let’s get this horrible campaign over with already:

Following the Yankees’ clinching win over the Los Angeles Angels, the Fox cameras were trained on the podium, as various presentations were made and interviews conducted. And just to the right, Mayor Bloomberg held his position on the podium, so long that it almost seemed awkward.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Will the mayoral race in New York look anything like the one in Albuquerque? Tonight’s the night:

The Thompson campaign seems to think [the term limit extension issue is salient for voters], and they’re looking at the recent mayor’s race in Albuquerque, where the mayor, Martin Chavez, was defeated after he successfully sued to throw out the law barring him from seeking another term.

. . .

Three days after Chavez’s defeat, a reporter asked Bloomberg if he was afraid the same thing would happen to him. Bloomberg, standing in his campaign headquarters with the term-limited mayor of Miami, Manny Diaz, said he wasn’t, because “the politics there are different than the politics here.”

Some differences:

In Albuquerque, there were three candidates.

In Albuquerque, the third candidate in the race was a Democrat, like the incumbent. One siphoned votes from the other while the Republican candidate, Berry, consolidated his base. Also, both Berry and the other challenger, Romero, focused their attacks on Chavez.

In Albuquerque, the election was nonpartisan.

And most notably, in Albuquerque, all the candidates participated in a public financing program that capped their spending.

That last difference — spending — explains the absurdity of Bloomberg arguing that it “costs a lot of money to get a message out” — this despite the fact that he has had eight years to craft said message, and that he has the best name recognition of any other mayor in America.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

More do-it-yourself editorial board. The Times bemoans Bloomberg’s obscene spending:

New York City’s campaign finance system is one of the best in the country. He does everyone a disservice by not complying with the system’s limits on spending.

Elsewhere on the opinion page, Bob Herbert calls the mayor’s race baiting a sign of vulnerability:

That the mayor is now willing to lock his principles in a safe deposit box and start riding the broomstick of ethnic politics suggests that he’s worried about the outcome of his race against Mr. Thompson . . .

*Everyone except El Diario, that is. And the Amsterdam News. Good for them. Also, do you wonder why the Times chose to run this endorsement on Saturday?

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

For a public figure, the prospect of earning a third opportunity to perform the second-toughest job in America brings with it a spine-stiffening sense of honor and the narcotic-like thrill of self-sacrifice. But this is not to say that spending more money than Ross Perot to accomplish that feat in any way betrays signs of weakness:

Michael R. Bloomberg, the Wall Street mogul whose fortune catapulted him into New York’s City Hall, has set another staggering financial record: He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

Newly released campaign records show the mayor, as of Friday, had spent $85 million on his latest re-election campaign, and is on pace to spend between $110 million and $140 million before the election on Nov. 3.

That means Mr. Bloomberg, in his three bids for mayor, will have easily burned through more than $250 million — the equivalent of what Warner Brothers spent on the latest Harry Potter movie.

The sum easily surpasses what other titans of business have spent to seek state or federal office. New Jersey’s Jon S. Corzine has plunked down a total of $130 million in two races for governor and one for United States Senate. Steve Forbes poured $114 million into his two bids for president. And Ross Perot spent $65 million in his quest for the White House in 1992 and $10 million four years later.

. . .

He has spent at least 14 times what his Democratic rival in the race, William C. Thompson Jr., has: $6 million.

The heady display of overwhelming force also provokes adulation from supporters and admirers:

The Sanitation Department reported yesterday that Thompson’s campaign is facing a hefty $125,775 bill for plastering city property with 1,677 illegal campaign posters.

. . .

In contrast to Thompson, Bloomberg’s campaign has been cited for 70 violations.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

And don’t think he doesn’t make every effort to get to all five boroughs:

On Oct. 11, Bloomberg parachuted (not literally) into Morris Park for a brief march in the annual Columbus Day Parade. Thompson didn’t make it. Before the mayor jumped back into his black SUV, he was heckled by about a dozen protesters (and one dog) upset with the city’s opening (without community notification) of several new homeless shelters in the borough, according to reporter David Greene.

John Bonizio, of the Westchester Square Merchants Association, called Bloomberg a “traitor,” adding, “His coming up to this middle class neighborhood to march in a parade for votes is disrespecting us, with what he’s getting ready to do to this neighborhood.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

The Times’ Clyde Haberman* notes the selective quoting from certain endorsements for certain mayoral candidates:

Take an endorsement of the mayor issued this week by Citizens Union, often described as a good-government group, as if there were bad-government groups. (Hang on, there is one. We almost forgot about Albany.)

A news release from the Bloomberg campaign announcing the endorsement cited its praise of mayoral actions on crime, education, public health and technological innovation.

Somehow, it omitted other noteworthy points. Like the group’s disapproval of the billionaire mayor’s rewriting of the term limits law to turn himself into Bloomberg L.P.: Long Playing. Like the displeasure with his “excessive” — an adjective that some others have used is “obscene” — campaign spending.

The cherry-picking would do a Broadway press agent proud.

Which made me think — all of us should selectively quote from those Soviet-like editorial endorsements that have been rolling out lately. Today, for example, there’s the Post:

No doubt, some New Yorkers are angry about how Mayor Mike used his considerable resources to having them set aside to allow him to run again. It was a characteristic display of Bloombergian hubris, and we suspect that it will cost him on Election Day.

It’s all much better this way! Now we can make believe that there’s still sanity left at the editorial boards across the city.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

*Don’t not click through to his column; there’s a provocative claim of racial coding on the part of Bloomberg with his recent Detroit warning.

It won’t be such a spectacular upset if the editorial boards of every newspaper in town don’t endorse him. Thankfully, here are two more: The Observer, which absurdly argues that being the mayor of New York City is the second-toughest job in America, and the Advance, which slyly notes that “perfection in this life, and especially in this city, is impossible.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

“If Mike Bloomberg is going to stick around until 2014, he wants to have all possible power at his disposal. How he uses that power can’t completely efface the fact of how he gained it.”:

Even if the cause was unseemly, the execution of the political strategy to rewrite the law was staggeringly impressive, enlisting Bloomberg’s moneyed friends and the friends he’s made with his money and displaying an impressive eye for detail. An ethnically diverse cast of average citizens appeared in the front row at the council hearings, clutching preprinted signs reading democrats for choices. Bloomberg campaign aides like Patrick Brennan were suddenly “volunteering” their time to round up supporters to pass the needed City Council bill extending term limits. When Linda Gibbs, the mayor’s head of Health and Human Services, lobbied an official at a social-services group to make calls to council members, there didn’t seem to be much choice. The mayor’s operatives coaxed a wide range of recipients of his charitable donations to testify, but most were smart enough that they didn’t need an invitation. The Public Art Fund has received at least $500,000 from Bloomberg; its head, Susan Freedman, spoke enthusiastically on the mayor’s behalf — and, she says, with a clear conscience because of Bloomberg’s belief in the importance of the arts. “Do you think you would need to twist my arm to have me want this kind of leadership continue?” she said afterward.

The parade of witnesses included Mario Cuomo, the former governor, who is now of counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the firm that is defending Bloomberg L.P. against sexual-discrimination lawsuits and that has as one of its top partners Richard DeScherer, Bloomberg’s lawyer. Geoffrey Canada, who runs the Harlem Children’s Zone, spoke of his worry for New York’s most vulnerable during the downturn. He didn’t mention that his organization has city contracts worth millions of dollars and has received more than $500,000 in private money from Bloomberg.

“It’s a legitimate question, to ask about people being compromised,” Canada says. “But everybody knows we get money from the city! We have since the seventies. I wouldn’t turn down money from anyone who wants to support our programs. But is my vote for sale? Absolutely not. I’m very comfortable with the real reasons I’m supporting Bloomberg — his attention to education, the reduction in crime without the rancor of the Giuliani years, and his fairness in spreading the budget pain.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

And Willie Aames wonders if this somehow means that his life may turn around:

As the debate concluded, Mr. Carter asked each candidate to say something nice about the other. Both complied, momentarily, before reverting to attack mode.

“He is a great golfer,” Mr. Bloomberg said. But he added, “I just think he’s not the right person to lead the city for the next four years.”

Mr. Thompson offered that the mayor “is well dressed” but went on, “At some point, after eight years, eight is enough and it’s time for him to go.”

The mayor became uncharacteristically animated, interjecting: “Wait, wait. Eight isn’t enough for better schools, eight isn’t enough for lower crime.”

Mr. Thompson shot back: “Obviously eight is enough, when you violate the will of the people and overturn term limits.”

At that point, the moderator put a stop to it: “O.K. All right.”

. . . Conventionally wise Steve Kornacki writes a CYA piece four weeks out:

Lest I be accused a month from now of having had my head buried in the sand while this turned into a real contest, let me state for the record: Bill Thompson could end up making this a much tighter affair than we think.

The Community Newspaper Group — the Murdoch-owned entity that not so long ago gobbled up like half of the borough-centered weeklies — publishes its Bloomberg endorsement on all of its associated websites (the gutting of the Brooklyn Paper makes me sad):

Granted, Mayor Bloomberg’s quest for a third term has not been the prettiest thing to watch. First, the billionaire mayor, a former Democrat, renounced his Republican Party affiliation during a flirtation with the presidency in 2008 as an independent.

Then, when faced with the obstacle of New York City’s two-term limit, he spent a considerable sum of money to overturn the inconvenient law.

For many voters, that disqualifies Bloomberg from further service.

But for us, it is but a blemish on an otherwise stellar record.

You have to like that way of putting it — “but a blemish on an otherwise stellar record.” Let’s skip the lamely obvious parallels, but I want to try this on because it might be fun. So Clinton’s perjury was “but a blemish on an otherwise stellar record,” as was Nixon’s obstruction of justice. In this way, Robert MacNamara’s technocratic plunge into Vietnam was also “but a blemish on an otherwise stellar record,” and half of Hollywood apparently believes that Roman Polanski’s indiscretion with a child was similarly “but a blemish on an otherwise stellar record.” When you put things that way — “but a blemish”! — everything sounds OK. I like it.

Tom Robbins details the chronology of the mayor’s Tonkin Gulfing of the democratic system*:

[M]any months before economic disaster struck in September 2008 — the crisis that Bloomberg said prompted his reversal on term limits — the mayor was already pondering the move.

You know, the Seal of the City of New York has the words “Sigillum Civitatis Novi Eboraci” on it. “Sigillum Civitatis Novi Eboraci” just means “Seal of the City of New York” — in other words, grandiose Latin bullshit. Why not change it to “Progressio Non Politics”? It’s got a nice ring to it — like “Ordem e Progresso,” “Gangseong Daeguk,” “Patria y Libertad” or “Allah Is Great.”

*Don’t forget how piqued the mayor became at Azi Paybarah’s “disgraceful” questioning about the state of the economy and the rationale for a third term.

U2, the masters of the generous gesture bound to look good on videotape, provide Mayor Bloomberg with another generous gesture that looked good on videotape (or YouTube, as the case may be), but the real question is how much that carbon offset is worth:

CBS 2 caught Bloomberg’s chopper buzzing the Meadowlands as he searched in vain for the right place to land the chopper so the mayor could go to the U2 concert. It was a test run, and the pilot botched it, so when he came back with the mayor, he had to land farther away.

But it left the oh-so-green mayor’s face oh-so-red on Friday. CBS 2’s Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reminded Bloomberg that it takes a lot more energy to fly a chopper than a car, wasting a lot of energy.

“I suppose you could say that, but there’s other ways to get around,” he said. “Some are more energy efficient, I could have walked or swam across the river as well, that would have used less.”

It was a “gotcha” moment for an avowed environmentalist. He regularly takes the subway and appeared Thursday with former Vice President Al Gore to say painting rooftops white saves energy. On Friday, he talked about teaching building supers energy-saving practices.

“I believe government should lead by example,” Bloomberg added.

The mayor was anxious to get to the U2 concert for a meeting with Bono, who later praised the mayor’s philanthropy.

. . .

The mayor is so green that five different environmental groups refused to comment about the story.

World-famous incomprehensible op-ed writer Bono makes the case for suspending term limits at the Meadowlands. Ready-made campaign video ensues. I gather this Boldface Name Campaign is supposed to be impressing us? Just tell me where to land the helicopter.

Top down trees, killer trees — maybe it’s simply a case of vigilante justice:

Dozens have been destroyed in the past few months — their roots torn up, branches snapped and trunks hacked.

But if we don’t pay attention to them, they don’t exist.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips*:

As a billionaire in one of the dining capitals of the world, he can eat anything he wants. But he is obsessed with his weight — so much so that the sight of an unflattering photo of himself can trigger weeks of intense dieting and crankiness, according to friends and aides.

His food issues have become New York City’s. Although he has described his battle against unhealthy foods as common-sense public policy that will shed pounds (and save lives), many of his targets overlap with his own cravings.

“I like a Big Mac like everybody else,” he confessed the other day, explaining the city’s warts-and-all approach to fast food. “I just want to know how many calories are in it.”

Under his watch, the city has declared sodium an enemy, asking restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the salt in their dishes by 20 percent or more, and encouraging diners to “shake the habit” by asking waiters for food without added salt.

But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel “that it’s like a pretzel,” said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house.

Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it.

And then there’s the concept of Asshole-In-Chief:

When he does not like the food, he rarely holds back. After dining at Blue Smoke, Mr. Meyer’s barbecue restaurant on East 27th Street, the mayor told Mr. Meyer, “I just don’t like it.”

Mr. Meyer tried inviting him back, but the mayor would not budge. “It never feels good when somebody tells you they don’t like your restaurant, but it’s nice when a politician does not pander,” he said, adding that the mayor has heaped praise on Union Square Cafe.

*In fact, Thompson should consider making this a slogan of sorts, e.g., you think it’s OK to suspend term limits just this once, but consider the deleterious long-term effects . . .

At the risk of making Thomas Farley weep fat hypertension-inducing tears, as Tom Colicchio might say, this is undersalted:

Nothing perhaps encapsulates the approach of the Bloomberg campaign better than its primary night event, where people were invited to “celebrate” the evening with the mayor, essentially congratulating themselves for supporting his decision to put himself on the ballot again. In a space big enough to park a few airplanes, with enough drink tables and salt-free pretzel carts scattered between the sign-up tables to make the scene seem more massive multicultural bar mitzvah than political rally, people picked up the buttons or posters that fit them best, whether African-Americans for Bloomberg (written in African national colors) or Ferry Riders for Bloomberg. They stuffed themselves full with free brownies and blondies. They cheered every time Padma Lakshmi, the model and Top Chef host, arrived at a pre-selected face in the crowd to talk up another aspect of the volunteer effort.

The safe, scrubbed atmosphere of the event, for which the campaign is not disclosing a price tag before the scheduled Oct. 2 filing, paralleled Bloomberg’s vision of the city as a place that is easy, non-intrusive and wholesome, one perfectly encapsulated by Lakshmi’s introduction, which began with the Indian beauty confiding, “I sleep at night because Mike Bloomberg is my mayor.”

She grasped for reasons why, beyond being able to use credit cards in taxis instead of having to carry around a wad of cash and being able to go to a bar without having her hair smell like smoke afterward. But Bloomberg helped her along when he took the microphone, delivering an unusually cutting speech keyed to match with the “Progress, Not Politics” placards that had been distributed through the crowd he called his “grassroots supporters.”

*In fact, Wolfson should start integrating this Reagan-esque concept into campaign appearances — e.g., “Is your dry cleaning bill cheaper now than it was four years ago?”

Maybe I’m cranky having seen Bloomberg’s “New York Minute” ad — you know, the one where the narrator says how running New York is “the second toughest job in America” — right after the actual president was on David Letterman, but I think there are a lot harder jobs out there than installing lawn furniture on Broadway.

First, the phrase “second toughest job” has pretty clearly always been used in either a self-deprecating way of referring to serving as the mayor of an “ungovernable” place or as an “Aw Shucks” euphemism for the mayor of New York in AP reports reprinted in far-flung places. But I don’t think any of these people actually thought being mayor of New York was that tough — or at least has been since the bad old days of Abe Beame.

For the record, here are some people in the public sector that I think have a marginally more difficult job in 2009: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is somehow managing California’s $25 billion debt (see here for relative sizes of economies); Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who is managing a military undertaking two difficult wars; how about General Stanley McChrystal? — while Obama said little on Letterman about New York’s traffic congestion, he did have a lot to say about Afghanistan; Tim Geithner’s job seems like it has been pretty tough; even Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s job seems tougher than Bloomberg’s; and while we’re talking about mayors, I think both Adrian Fenty (D.C.) and Cory Booker (Newark) have it a little tougher.

And because the campaign ad either skipped or overlooked that portion of the phrase that usually indicates “elected officials,” that means we can meditate on which people in the private sector also have “tough” jobs. That friendly man on the GM ad seems like a good place to start! Any of these jobs seem about fifty times as complicated as walking in a parade or banning smoking. We could go on . . .

All of which is kind of a symbol of the Bloomberg Era of New York: If Jimmy Walker or, I don’t know, Mad Men has taught me anything, New York was once kind of a swinging sort of wink-wink place that didn’t take itself all that seriously. Bloomberg (and not 9/11) has made New York insufferably earnest — from nanny statist initiatives to this absurd notion that anyone west of Morristown or north of Milford gives a shit about what the mayor of New York thinks. Bloomberg’s campaign using the phrase “the second toughest job in America” sincerely is the quintessence of Bloomberg’s megalomania, not to mention a perfect snapshot of his humorlessness. To make matters worse, running that ad right after Obama was doing something historic on television (e.g., spending an hour on a talk show) showed a complete lack of self-awareness. Do you really want four more years of that?

Yes he can:

“But what the hell do they know about management and dealing with people? Nothing. If you look at my company, why, after all the success that we had before I ran for office would you not think that I couldn’t run the government? What the hell do I gotta do to prove myself? Or, after the success my company has had and our administration has had, why do you think I wouldn’t be qualified to be president of the United States? I mean, for God’s sake, I’m not running, but this is not different.”

Setting aside the way the question was worded — after all, isn’t all advertising basically “annoying”? — there’s an opening here, too:

The poll of 1,290 registered voters, conducted Aug. 18-24, found that nearly 80% have seen the mayor’s TV commercials.

Those who saw the commercials were asked if they were annoying or informative, and 47% said annoying, 41% informative and the rest didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

Asked if the ads made it more or less likely they would vote for Bloomberg, 18% said less likely, 15% said more likely, 64% said no difference and 3% didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

“Mayor Mike might be wasting his money on that zillion-dollar TV buy,” said Quinnipiac polling director Maurice Carroll.

The Post does the heavy lifting, getting inside of the Standard Hotel and uncovering the horrible truth about the Standard’s viral campaign:

“We don’t discourage it. In actual fact, we encourage it,” a friendly bellhop told a pair of reporters as they checked in yesterday at The Standard, where randy guests cavort with abandon to the dismay — or delight — of parkgoers below.

After the hotel opened late last year, the bellhop said, naked and semidressed staff members were encouraged to pose in front of the windows. The point, he said, was to create a buzz with the unexpected peep show.

“One of the managers even got naked in a room, and filmed it — they were considering a live feed for the Web site,” the staffer said. “She’s an exhibitionist, too.”

Because of course nothing delights a parkgoer more than catching a middle-aged European tourist jacking off in the window . . . so edgy!

Location Scout: High Line.

You could call it an elevated train track that was converted into a park. Or you could conceive of it as an “urban catwalk,” if you prefer:

Gaspar Libedinsky, one of the High Line park designers, was all for the voyeurism: “It is like an urban catwalk. It is a place to see and be seen.”

Location Scout: High Line.

. . . he didn’t really say that much to DC37 about the Taylor Law, which, yes, if you spin it right, makes people remember the TWU strike, but besides, where did you get this anyway, because it has the Bloomberg campaign’s pawprints all over it?

Not funny at all:

“Community colleges are really a step for a lot of people,” Bloomberg began. Then the mayor stepped in it.

“We did it as part of something where I was trying to lay out in the campaign [what] you would do in a fourth term, which I think you have a responsibility to do,” he continued.

Kickball, dodgeball and now cardboard tube fighting.

Location Scout: McCarren Park.

Secondary lesson — disregard most of what Howard Wolfson ever says:

As a master strategist for the New York Democratic Party, Mr. Wolfson worked with a handful of other elite party operatives to lay out a grand plan to defeat Mr. Bloomberg in the 2005 mayoral race, writing in an internal memo, “Michael Bloomberg is an out-of-touch billionaire who can’t relate to the problems of ordinary New Yorkers.”

When the mayor tried to impose nonpartisan elections in the city, Mr. Wolfson called it a “cynical power grab.” When he spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money to bankroll his re-election, Mr. Wolfson said such spending “distorts the terms of the debate.” He impugned Mr. Bloomberg’s attempt to build a West Side stadium (an “out-of whack-priority”) and even criticized his beloved “Gates,” the saffron cloth panels arrayed through Central Park by the artist Christo (”shmattes on sticks”).

And when some prominent Democrats defected to the Bloomberg camp that year, Mr. Wolfson cried foul, declaring himself personally dismayed by their disloyalty.

This year, Mr. Bloomberg is again spending tens of millions of dollars to run for re-election on the Republican ballot line against a Democratic opponent. But this time, Mr. Wolfson is a senior architect of the effort.

Mr. Wolfson’s conversion has become a source of fascination and dismay among New York Democrats, who are now on the other end of the cutting brand of politics he perfected as a chief strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the city, he is credited in political circles with pressuring Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, to quit the mayor’s race. The switch has been cited as an example of how the billionaire mayor, who is prepared to spend as much as $100 million of his own money to win a third term, can buy the silence of even his most ardent critics — an assertion summarily dismissed by Mr. Wolfson, whose consulting firm is earning $40,000 a month from the campaign.

Third lesson — the people who flock to Bloomberg are cheap dates, yes-people who tie their careers and legacies to the most powerful in a way that Niccolo Machiavelli would approve of:

Mr. Wolfson said in an interview at the Bloomberg campaign complex in Midtown that he was as surprised as anyone to be where he was, but he described himself as one of many Democrats who have come to admire the mayor — and said such political conversions are the best testament to the cross-party allure of Mr. Bloomberg’s nonideological way of governing.

Still, there is an alternate view: that Mr. Wolfson, reeling from Mrs. Clinton’s demoralizing loss, and an object of scorn among some Obama loyalists for the attacks he waged long after it became clear that she had no chance of winning, saw in Mr. Bloomberg an easy, high-profile victory.

“I am not interested in losing,” he said.

Fourth lesson — anything these people say is the pinnacle of debate club-style bullshit:

It has also been intriguing for people to watch Mr. Wolfson explain away things he once declared outrageous, like the mayor’s campaign spending.

On a Friday afternoon in the spring, he gathered a group of reporters in Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign headquarters to share the news that the mayor had spent $18 million in the first few months of his re-election effort. The announcement spurred the kind of questions Mr. Wolfson himself once so pointedly asked, like whether the mayor was trying to buy the election. Mr. Wolfson knocked down the questions in stride, and did not seem the least bit fazed by the contradictions.

“They don’t pay me,” he said in an interview that day, “to disagree with the mayor.”

Fifth lesson — it’s also easy to stop this. Just refuse — no matter how many glossy circulars you get about “jobs” or “honesty” or how many commercials you see about the man who “sees rooftops” or how many editorial boards endorse* (the latest suckup comes from the Queens Chronicle) — to vote for Bloomberg. And with any luck people like Howard Wolfson will go down with him, too.

*But remember that there are heroic beat reporters who don’t agree and will stand up to the mayor by continuing to ask the inconvenient questions . . . these people (Times Metro reporters, Observer reporters and at least someone at the Voice, too, as well as at least two editorial writers) are the last line of defense and deserve our attention and respect. (This does not apply to the New York Post, which has proved very capable of carrying water for Bloomberg.) When everyone from the rich to the non-profit sector and the unions to political operatives like Howard Wolfson have totally rolled over, reporters are all we have left.

Like a pro, Bloomberg dumped the news that he has seemingly broke every conceivable spending record on a Friday. How brave:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign for re-election has already burned through nearly $37 million, according to records released Friday, about four times as much as he had spent at this point in 2001 to introduce himself to New York voters.

So is this a “self-made man” practicing “free speech” or is it actually kind of one of the most offensive examples of the ever-present nexus of wealth and power that hangs over American society? OK, don’t answer that.

But here are some comparisons. Combined spending during the 2000 New York Senate race between Clinton, Giuliani and later Lazio was “only” $90 million — apparently the most expensive Senate campaign in history. Even Senator Clinton’s 2006 reelection campaign “only” spent $36 million, which was still the highest amount during the 2006 Senate campaign cycle. Jon Corzine — another “self-made man” — “only” spent $60 million for his first Senate run in 2000. And while Bloomberg outspends Thompson (or whoever) 50 gazillion to one (or whatever), remember that Al Gore spent $49 million during the 2000 primary cycle in an election where people were shocked to see the first $100 million campaign. (Last several figures from here.)

$100 million seems like a lot for someone whose main responsibility is to fix potholes.