President Obama has been a busy bee the last two days, spending a huge swath of time with the press and in front of the cameras. Aside from using the White House website as his personal PR firm – putting out pictures of himself with the folks at FEMA and the Red Cross and in the White House situation room, and giving updates stating that he had “expressed his concern” and been informed “throughout the night” – Obama desperately wanted to visit New York City to let the photographers capture him overseeing the damage. He wanted his hero moment.

And Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City doesn’t have time for that nonsense. He’s actually too busy being the mayor of a city in major crisis to squire Obama around for his election campaign.

Today, Bloomberg rejected Obama’s offer to visit the city. “We’d love to have him, but we’ve got lots of things to do,” said Bloomberg. It was “fine” for Obama to visit New Jersey, Bloomberg said. “People understand the storm and he doesn’t have to … he’s got a lot of things to do.”

The White House then followed suit by claiming that the arrangement was mutual, and that they agreed it “would not be the right time to visit New York City.” Sure.