Mayor-in-Chief.(The Talk of the Town)(Michael Bloomberg)

Among the events hosted recently by Mayor Michael Bloomberg was an information-sharing lunch at City Hall for newly elected mayors. The guests included leaders of the kinds of communities that, were he to run for President, Bloomberg would need to spend more time in. In attendance: the mayors of Hamilton and Toms River, New Jersey; East Haven and Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Beacon, Hudson, Mount Vernon, Peekskill, Poughkeepsie, Saratoga Springs, and Utica, New York. The menu reflected the region's bounty--strip-steak salad from beef raised upstate, apple crostada, and Long Island-made wine--though Bloomberg didn't appear to eat any of it. "He was too busy giving us the State of the City address or something," Mayor Richard Scalera, of Hudson (pop. 6,985), said. "We had a few minutes for small talk, and before you knew it they were shuffling us down to take a tour of the bull pen."

There was a press conference: packed. The new mayors stood against a back wall (lots of red ties and thick lapels) while Bloomberg repeated some job advice from Ed Koch--"Do all the parades"--and stuck, deflatingly, to the subject of mayoring: New York City's population is 8.25 million, but he and his fellow-mayors deal with "the same problems. People want services and they don't want to pay for them. The job of being mayor is a great job, because people can measure your performance. You say you're going to do something, and the next day they know whether you did it or not." At the end of the talk, Mayor Bill Finch, of Bridgeport, wandered over to Bloomberg's lectern, placed both hands on it, and looked around. "I've always wanted to do that," he said.

A black van took the guests to the city's 311 information center, nearby. (Bloomberg had another appointment.) "My office is about the size of this vehicle," Mayor John Bencivengo, of Hamilton (motto: "New Jersey's Shining Star"), said. Bencivengo had already had a transportation issue: when he got off the train that morning, he asked his taxi-driver to take him to City Hall, but he was taken to Radio City Music Hall instead. At the 311 center, the mayors watched a PowerPoint ...