Buyer's Remorse?

CAN'T HELP BUT NOTICE how testy Mike Bloomberg has been acting lately. Despite a tightly controlled, almost scripted narrative of a run for his third term, it hasn't been all smooth sailing for Bloomberg, who has recently squeezed in a full campaign season's worth of verbal blunders -- and it's still early June.

The most recent example came in the aftermath of Dategate: the First Couple jetting into New York City for dinner and a show. Asked how much the president's trip cost the City in security expenses, Billionayor Bloomberg swatted the question away while typically boiling everything down to tourism: "I can't think of anything that is better as an advertisement for our tourism industry, for Broadway, for our restaurants, for saying that this is a safe city and an affordable city."

Then, as if intentionally trying to compound the absurdity of calling New York City "affordable," he belted out the following gem: "The President doesn't get paid that much. He's on a budget, too."

Well, as you might expect, the tabloids let Bloomberg have it for that one, with one Daily News story headlined:

Get a clue, Bloomy! Mayor touts Obamas' 'affordable' night on Broadway

Even The Times couldn't resist piling on. As Michael Barbaro put it in a fairly caustic Monday column:

"It was the latest puzzling remark in a re-election campaign filled with colorful foot-in-mouth mayoral utterances. He has scolded a disabled blogger, Michael Harris, who uses a wheelchair, for accidentally turning on a tape recorder at a news conference. And, last week, he bitterly rebuked a reporter, Azi Paybarah, who asked about his decision to overturn the city’s term limits law." This kind of foot-in-mouth syndrome would have to manifest itself on almost a daily basis from now until the election in November for the 67-year-old frontrunner to be denied his third term. Toward that end, Bloomberg has already spent $20 million of a projected $60 million on radio and TV ads.

standing what is essentially an unlimited budget, Mayor Mike continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons. Last week at a press conference he again managed to veer off-message -- calling the New York Observer's Azi Paybarah "a disgrace" for having the temerity to bring up the mayor's original rationale for seeking a third term -- that the financial crisis demands a leader of his rare business acumen. Now, the question was served with a side order of sarcasm that seemed to set off Hizzoner:

Mr. Paybarah: If the economy is turning around, as you said, does that mean that the rationale for extending term limits–

Mr. Bloomberg: I don’t know why … why don’t we just get serious questions here. The rationale for extending term limits is, the City Council passed it and the public’s going to have a chance on Nov. 3 to say what they want. And I don’t think we have to keep coming back to that. When you have a serious question about the economy I will be happy to answer it. Anything else?"

After that, a fuming Bloomberg stared directly at Mr. Paybarah and said, “You are a disgrace.”

Barbaro's piece included two other examples of Bloomberg's trademark callousness:

After parents complained about dangerously hot rubber safety mats on city playgrounds, he responded: “If it’s hot, don’t sit on it.” About crowded subways, and the griping they engender, he once said: “So you stand next to people. Get real. This is New York.”

A guy would have to be awfully insecure to be this nasty this often. I mean, Bloomberg is the wealthiest New Yorker and the 17th richest guy in the whole world. But no matter how much he spends on advertisements attesting to the contrary, he shares a bullying streak with his ho unsurprisingly also sought to circumvent the term limits statute following 9/11.

It should be emphasized that the mayor's latest blunders come in the wake of much stricter ground rules for reporters lucky enough to cover his expected coronation. The new directive limits all questions to campaign matters, with policy questions off limits. Yet obviously there's little the mayor's staff can do to offset his recent propensity to say the wrong thing at the worst time.

Last week he somehow found a way offend the widow of a swine flu victim with his remark that "In some senses, if you have H1N1 [virus], you should consider yourself lucky because it so far seems to be a milder flu than the garden variety." To be fair, Bloomberg did follow up his impromptu diagnosis with an explanation that "It's very sad that those that we've lost are gone, but the good news is that so far it does seem to be a relatively mild flu" -- but the damage was done and the tabloids had their money "consider yourself lucky" quote and were busy running wih itIn short order, Bonnie Wiener, whose husband Michael was the city's first death frirus, waw one om the vfor his insensitive remarks:

"I'm not feeling very lucky. I'm sorry I can't agree with that. My children are not feeling very lucky either. It's a very puzzling comment to make." -- also revealing that, "When my husband died it was on the media before they called to tell me."

One of the free daily papers here today noted that Bloomberg has spent 10 times more than his closest challenger -- City Comptroller William Thompson, who is 15 points behind in the latest poll. Then a chart showed what the $20 million could restore to the mayor's 2010 austerity budget:

$12 million -- cuts to prekindergarten classes

$3.8 million -- afterschool programs

$561,000 -- home meals for senior citizens

$1.5 million -- literacy classes

$500,000 -- Housing Court

$1.3 million -- dropout prevention

$360,000 -- anti-predatory lending awareness

Of course, the whole premise is kind of unfair -- the campaign spending is coming out of Bloomberg's own deep pockets while the cuts are part of a $59 billion municipal budget -- but I'm not hating it. Because after all 20 million dollars is an obscene amount of money to spend on a race that is for all intents and purposes uncontested.