Vigorous flip-floppery doesn’t necessarily make Bloomberg a hypocrite. Hypocrites hold one view while practicing the opposite, which isn’t what Bloomberg does. He merely does whatever he wants to do and closes his eyes to contradictions. Take, for example, his oscillating stand on mayoral term limits in New York. In 2008 while completing his second term, Bloomberg strong-armed the City Council into changing the term-limits law to allow him a third term. He even pressured groups that had benefited from his philanthropy to back the third-term proposal. “I just think that three terms makes more sense than two,” Bloomberg said to his critics after winning.

Then, in 2010, in the middle of his third term, Bloomberg made a successful call for a return to the two-term limit. As the New York Times reported, Mike offered no explanation for his flip-flop, probably because outside of his personal desire to serve three terms and deny any future candidate the same opportunity, he had none. When a New York Observer reporter pressed him on the topic at a news conference, an agitated Bloomberg said, “Why don’t we just get serious questions here?” On the way out, Bloomberg deployed what would ultimately become a favorite insult of President Donald Trump's when he whispered to the reporter, “You're a disgrace.”

Although he governs like a surveillance-state extremist, Bloomberg has long demanded exceptions to preserve his own privacy. When mayor, he kept secret the destinations of the frequent nonofficial trips he took out of New York. In 2012, Mayor Bloomberg had his wrists slapped by the city campaign finance board for contravening the spirit of campaign finance rules when he gave a personal donation in excess of $1 million, which he failed to report promptly as a campaign expenditure, to the New York State Independence Party. This pattern continues in other regulatory venues: His fellow Democratic presidential candidates have filed their mandatory financial reports with the Federal Election Commission, but Bloomberg hasn’t, as POLITICO’s Maggie Severns reports. He applied for and was granted an extension on mandatory financial disclosure by the FEC until March 20, which falls after Super Tuesday, when he hopes to win big in California and Texas. Bloomberg played a similar game of peekaboo with his money when he was mayor, allowing journalists to view, but not possess, redacted versions of his tax returns.

Doing it his way on the campaign trail, Bloomberg has opted out of trying to qualify for the debates, dismissing the match-ups as “good theater” that don't “address the issues.” He’s also skipping the first four presidential contests—Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Rejecting a meat-space campaign, he’s avoiding big rallies as well as town-hall events where voters can grill him. Instead, he’s conducting an air war on big-state voters, bombing them with an unprecedented $248 million in TV advertising. To assuage any hard feelings among Democrats about his candidacy, Bloomberg promises to spend up to $1 billion of his fortune on electing the party’s nominee no matter who it is. When you’re that loaded, you have every incentive to annoy people because you know you can always win them back with a fan of green.

This isn’t to argue that Bloomberg is so mercurial that every position he holds is written in sand. Many of them, such as gun control and public health nannyism, are written in stone. But like Donald Trump, Bloomberg behaves like reversing course is his greatest pleasure. In December 2018, when his candidacy was still imaginary, he told Radio Iowa that should he run for president, he would either place his company in a blind trust or sell it.

“But I think at my age, if selling it is possible, I would do that,” Bloomberg said. “At some point, you’re going to die anyway, so you want to do it before then.”

When Bloomberg finally announced his candidacy last November, he neither sold his company nor put it in a blind trust. He kept it. Why? Because Mike Bloomberg always does what he wants to do.

******

Bloomberg was still defending the now-discredited "stop-and-frisk" policies he promulgated as New York mayor as recently as January 2019. Now he'’s apologizing. Stop, frisk, and send me email: [email protected]. My email alerts have used their riches to buy influence with my Twitter feed. My RSS feed was last seen on Rikers Island.