Bloomberg said that his “plans for the future haven’t changed,” but what that means depends entirely on what his “plans for the future” have been. As Walter Shapiro reported in Salon the other day, Bloomberg has waved off talk of a presidential run, but his “top political advisors make scant secret that they are currently plotting ways for him to enter the 2008 White House field as a problem-solving independent, socially liberal and fiscally responsible.”

It could be an uphill run, at least if voters in Bloomberg’s home state have anything to say about it. In a new Quinnipiac University poll released this morning, New York voters were asked to name their favorites in a hypothetical three-way presidential race among three New York-based candidates. The result: Hillary Clinton leads the pack with 43 percent, Rudy Giuliani — whose South Carolina campaign chairman was indicted yesterday on cocaine charges — comes in second with 29 percent, and Bloomberg brings up the rear with 16 percent.

It’s an intriguing tale; Taylor is more than worthy of the splashy feature about her that ran Sunday. And I won’t lie; I was not dismayed by its initial whiff of Danielle Steel-ish drama: “By day, she regulates thousands of institutions in the nation’s financial capital while he owns a multibillion-dollar business and runs a world-class city. By night, she is his much-photographed partner in the glittering social swirl.” Cue the “Dallas” theme!

But things took a worrisome turn as I read writer Diane Cardwell call the couple’s relationship “something of a novelty in government circles” and describe Taylor’s behaviors — hanging out at Bloomberg’s house, attending events with him, telling the media that she’s proud of him — as if reporting on the mating habits of some exotic flying squirrel.

Bloomberg’s feelings about his relationship receive the same quizzical attention. Cardwell reports that while the mayor occasionally makes “Take my girlfriend, please” jokes, he “appears devoted to his significant other” and last week skipped a White House dinner to celebrate Taylor’s 51st birthday, explaining, “That has to be a very high priority on my list of things to do.”

Fascinating! This “girlfriend” creature spends time with the mayor in public and private; they appear to like each other quite a lot; they may even have sex — and yet they remain unmarried. What gives? Where is the ring? If he’s getting so much milk for free, will he ever consider buying the cow?

You think I’m kidding. I’m not. “Still, the question arises,” writes Cardwell in all seriousness: “After nearly six years of dating and with all they have in common, why have the two, who are both divorced, not married?”

What is this, 1964? Why is this a question? And why is Taylor, a Wall Street macher, a state banking executive and the center of a story about the influence of lobbies on federal appointments, required to answer it? Maybe she wondered the same thing, since as Cardwell notes, she pursed her lips “as if she had just swallowed cough syrup” before managing to spit out, “It’s been five and half years, it’s great.”

But just as Cardwell describes Taylor as “much livelier when speaking of just about anything [but the subject of her relationship with Bloomberg], like her work bringing banks to low-income neighborhoods that have none,” she’s taking on the banking superintendent’s “regrets about not having children of her own.” It’s unclear what Taylor’s regrets are; Cardwell does not quote her on that subject but, rather, on the fact that she has cute nephews, which apparently shows “a silver-lining approach that she appears to take to adversity.”

I had pretty much passed out by the time I got to Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s appraisal of Taylor’s wardrobe (“she obviously doesn’t have that fear of fashion”) but remained conscious enough to note that finally, in the last three paragraphs, Cardwell addresses Taylor’s quashed FDIC nomination. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work,” Taylor says of the experience. “You think you’re in control and you’re not.”

Like when you do an interview with the New York Times 10 days after the collapse of your federal appointment and you wind up answering questions about why you’re not hitched, don’t have your own kids and steer clear of pantsuits?

But 500 miles to the south, there’s evidence to suggest that Republicans hoping to win over African-American voters still have a long road ahead of them: Although Mehlman is working to recruit more African-American candidates around the country, a Republican running in the mayor’s race in Durham, N.C., probably isn’t exactly the sort of guy he has in mind.

As the News & Observer reported over the weekend, mayoral candidate Vincent Brown “has a long criminal history that includes felony convictions for forgery and a stretch in state prison.” According to the paper, “A criminal records search turned up more than 100 charges over the past 15 years that matched Brown’s name, current and prior addresses, and the two birth dates he has used. Most of the charges he has faced are misdemeanors: writing worthless checks, simple assault, fraud, trespassing, providing fictitious information to a police officer, possessing a weapon on school grounds, violating probation, failing to pay income tax, and driving while impaired.” Over the years, the paper says, Brown has pleaded guilty to 46 misdemeanor charges.

When the paper interviewed Brown last week, he showed up driving a late-model pickup, “though criminal records indicate his driver’s license was permanently revoked in 1992 after he pleaded guilty to driving while impaired.” When a reporter showed Brown documents that seemed to indicate he had been charged with a felony count of promoting the prostitution of a minor, Brown said, “That’s not me. I don’t know who that is. This is wrong … There are so many Vincent Browns.” According to the paper, Brown “then said the charges shouldn’t matter anyway, because they were dismissed — information not included on the documents he was shown. Asked how he knew the charges had been dismissed if he was not the Vincent Brown who had been arrested, Brown paused; then he laid out a scenario in which he was a victim of mistaken identity and had to hire a lawyer to help set the record straight. He reiterated that he had never been arrested.”

The assistant Durham district attorney who handled the prostitution case — which was, in fact, dropped after the victim’s family decided not to pursue it — confirmed for the paper that it had the right Vincent Brown.

Brown is running for office on a strong anticrime platform and has stressed the importance of “sound discipline, good father, church family.” His message has had some appeal in Durham, but as more revelations surface, some of his supporters are jumping ship. The head of the local GOP says that he’s reserving judgment. “We didn’t ask him to run. He came to us,” Steve Monks, the local Republican Party chairman, told the News & Observer. “Politics can play a role in the prosecution of individuals [by the Durham D.A.] … and a story in the newspaper, even a reasonably well-researched one, does not constitute proof.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs some brain tuning, especially when it comes to people’s names. At an NYU commencement speech yesterday he introduced N.Y. Yankees manager Joe Torre as “Joe Torr-ez.” Torre laughed it off, but it’s hard to ignore since a few days earlier at another graduation ceremony Bloomberg introduced folk singer Pete Seeger as Pete Rose. Maybe it’s the baseball stuff that confuses Mr. Bloombrenner. (N.Y. Daily News)

We hear that the encounter to watch for at Cannes this week is the one many bodyguards are trying to prevent — between Tom Cruise‘s gal pal Penelope Cruz and ex-wife Nicole Kidman. We think there’s a chance Tom has hired the entourages protecting these ladies. After all, no man wants his ex comparing notes with his current — that kind of confab has a way of uncovering all the lovely lies. (IMDB)

The CBS affiliate in Corpus Christi, Texas, has opted not to air a two-part miniseries this weekend about Adolf Hitler. The station’s manager gave his reason: “The Nazi concept, if you will, is still very real, and I think anything we do to give that particular thinking a venue, a format, is a mistake. More people that are already on the fence on this and have issues might find something in this character to identify with, and that bothers me tremendously.” Hmm … what was that saying about people who ignore history being doomed to repeat it? Maybe he missed school that day. (Knox News)

Fox TV programmers are a wiley bunch. They announced some of their fall line-up this week, including teases about a new version of “Joe Millionaire” and a show called “Skin” — “a new drama about the porn industry.” Now all they have to do is find women who either haven’t heard of the first Joe or who are stupid enough to fall for the rich-guy fake-out again and they need to figure out how to deal with the porn industry on network TV. You know, somehow we think they’ll pull it off. Unless, of course, they are blown out of the lowest-common-denominator water by UPN’s “The Mullets,” which is billed as “about a bunch of blue-collar brothers who love wrestling and wear their hair in mullets.” Is it time to shoot the TV yet? Nope, gotta wait for the last season of “The Sopranos” … (Washington Post)

Bookmark the Fix here.

If Isakson is as much of an expert on disaster relief as his Web site claims, he may wish to turn his attention to American schools instead. Unfortunately, with huge education budget cuts across the board and massive debts in the nation’s school systems ($200 billion and growing), one suspects those domestic contracts will not be forthcoming.

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“What’s a prisoner of war, Mommy?” “Are we civilians too, Mommy?” As news from Iraq becomes less and less reassuring, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg suggests a new approach to talking to kids about the war: Don’t tell Junior anything.

Instead, he advised in a press conference Wednesday, focus on “good stories with happy endings.” Bloomberg also reminded everyone that we shouldn’t scare kids because “they can’t do anything about security.”

The implied assumption, that adults can do something about security, is a lovely fairy tale indeed, and one that should help us all sleep better at night.

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First Person

Notes from a reservist

The writer is a medical supply sergeant waiting to be called to the Middle East.

I finished my basic training course nine years ago. Since then, I have managed to complete both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree as a civilian. I am a student in the academic study of philosophy, religion, classical humanities and, most intensely, American literature and history. My mentors and colleagues have been writers and thinkers of exceptional capabilities — and many of them make a habit of “deconstructing” some of the things in which I find profound meaning.

One of my first faux pas as a graduate student was at an academic conference, during a session where professors and graduate students read papers analyzing the cultural effects of such films as Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”

One young man’s paper discussed how, despite the graphic realism of its combat scenes, the film still served as a narrative of heroism, and no doubt would serve as a recruitment tool for today’s military. This, he emphasized with a dismal tone of voice and dour expression, was not a good thing.

During the question and answer session, I addressed this young man and announced to a crowded room of listeners that, while I agreed that there was nothing beautiful or heroic about combat, there remained a real-life necessity for American citizens to prepare themselves to meet adversaries on the battlefield. Despite our best wishes and ideals, people across the globe have yet to dispense with warfare as a practical solution to conflicts, and I cannot agree that our nation should be the first to disarm. No doubt in our lifetime there will be a situation that calls upon our citizens to fight a bloody war, and my preference is that those citizens go voluntarily rather than as draftees. If Spielberg’s realism prompted a select few to step forward for that duty, then I find no trouble in that.

After I spoke, the room fell silent. The young man, still standing, swayed silently back and forth until the session moderator moved on by saying, “OK, thanks for your comment. Next question.”

I felt embarrassed after that session, grandstanding as I did about “real world” ideals that smell of banality to most academics. But that’s what basic training was about: getting us ready for the cruel necessities of, yes, the real world.

For me, the most memorable moment of basic training occurred when my platoon was on a break in a parking lot. Many of us were kneeling down or sitting on a curb to pass the 15 or so minutes in conversation, a welcome rest in the middle of another long day of training. The sun blazed down, and I had my uniform blouse off and my T-shirt sleeves pushed up to catch a few rays.

Along with our drill sergeants, my platoon had been assigned a West Point cadet as some sort of intern — a cadet no older than I was, but who commanded the same authority and potential to terrorize recruits as did the drill sergeants. There was one recruit in my platoon, a man named Obijayne, who was of particular interest to this cadet.

We all liked Obijayne. He was kind of quiet and easy to get along with; he got in his share of wisecracks but always had a word of encouragement ready for anyone, and had cool stories to tell us about being from Morocco. The cadet picked on him, we thought, because he was a few years older than us. Or maybe it was because he was Arab. We couldn’t tell what it was, and it didn’t matter to us anyway. Obijayne was just part of our team who kept getting singled out.

As we sat on break, a few of us realized that the cadet had pulled Obijayne away and into a field to do the grass drills we referred to as “front, back, go!” Obijayne jogged in place, dropped to the ground, rolled left, then right, and jumped up at each of the cadet’s commands, dripping with sweat and struggling to keep up.

“That fucking cadet,” one guy said. “I’m getting out there with him.”

And so all 54 of us, men and women alike, jumped up from our break and ran out to the field to “front, back, go!” with Obijayne for another 15 minutes, in the heat.

But that was then. Nowadays I stay glued to the news, hoping for the safety of the soldiers I know and the soldiers I don’t know. Just this past December, I attended a noncommissioned officer school, and many of my classmates are likely in the desert right now — a Ranger, two infantrymen, a tank commander, a decontamination specialist, a gunner, an MP, a land surveyor. I spent anywhere from 12 to 18 hours per day for 13 days in a classroom with these guys, conducting morning exercise, sharing three meals a day, studying together, and even playing a few hands of spades.

And as with Obijayne, I don’t want any of those guys out there under fire without me falling in right behind them.

– Kristen L. Rouse