One year, one of his overmatched squads managed to score an early touchdown against mighty Ohio State, grabbing a 7-0 lead - at which point Mr. Corso called a time-out so his team could pose for a picture in front of the scoreboard. Then the game resumed and the Hoosiers lost 47-7.

Rick Lazio might want to borrow the same trick right about now.

The latest Siena poll has the former Long Island congressman pulling ahead of Governor David Paterson by three points in a 2010 trial heat. This would be a good point for Mr. Lazio to pause, pat himself on the back for his minor achievement, and maybe even frame a copy of the results for posterity. Because just like Mr. Corso's Hoosiers after that early touchdown, it'll be all downhill from here.

The problem for Mr. Lazio, of course, is that there is essentially a zero percent chance that he will face Mr. Paterson and his miserable poll numbers in next year's general election. It's not that Mr. Lazio won't secure the G.O.P. nod; he can and probably will do so. It's that Mr. Paterson won't come within a mile of the Democratic nomination - not as long as Andrew Cuomo is alive and scandal-free.

Within the next few months, Mr. Paterson, who consistently trails Mr. Cuomo by more than 50 points in a potential primary match-up, will probably bow out of the 2010 race, leaving Mr. Cuomo to claim the Democratic nod without opposition. Alternately, Mr. Paterson could fight on and force a primary - in which he'd do well to grab a quarter of the vote. Either way, Mr. Cuomo would be the party's standard-bearer next fall.

And against the popular attorney general, Mr. Lazio will be utterly overwhelmed: the same Siena poll that has him edging out the governor shows Mr. Lazio losing to Mr. Cuomo by 45 points.

To be sure, Mr. Lazio and his camp will spend the coming months promising to erode that lead and make it a real race.

They'll talk about how angry voters are with the status quo and how eager they are to throw the bums out. They'll play up the anti-incumbent (and maybe even anti-Democratic tide) that emerged in the New York City suburbs this fall and they'll draw parallels to 1994, when a similar mood (and a national G.O.P. wave) helped an unknown mayor of Peekskill end Mario Cuomo's Albany reign. And they'll remind everyone that Andrew Cuomo is still untested as a candidate - and that voters weren't interested when he last ran for governor, back in 2002.

And then they'll lose in a landslide.

We've actually seen the Cuomo-Lazio race before - when Eliot Spitzer, who used the A.G.'s office to rack up popularity similar to Cuomo's, smashed anonymous John Faso by 41 points in 2006. The margin will probably be closer next year, since 2006 was a big year nationally for Democrats while 2010 should favor the G.O.P. But it wouldn't be a stretch to install Mr. Cuomo as a 25-point favorite. He's just that popular.

It raises a question: Why is Mr. Lazio even bothering to run?

The easy answer is that he didn't know what he was getting into. Word of his interest leaked last January, just days before the bottom fell out for Mr. Paterson's poll numbers (thanks to the Caroline Kennedy debacle). But it's more than that. The pace of Mr. Lazio's candidacy has only accelerated even as it's become clear that Mr. Paterson is headed for the sidelines in '10. 

Most likely, he's looking for visibility - hoping that a credible enough showing (I held Cuomo under 60 points!) will remind the public who he is and make G.O.P. leaders think of him the next time there's an opening for a significant office (a House seat on Long Island in 2012, maybe?). It's been nearly a decade since his name was on a ballot, so there's some value for Mr. Lazio just in getting his name out there, no matter how doomed his candidacy might be.

But this isn't without risk - something that Mr. Faso discovered this spring, when memories of his horrific '06 showing prompted Republican leaders to give him the cold shoulder when they went looking for a congressional candidate in the 20^th District. If he loses badly (by 30 or more points, say) next year, Mr. Lazio could face similar stigma.

At least he'll be able to tell his grandkids that, for one fleeting moment, he was beating a sitting governor in the polls.

But as a candidate for governor in 2006, Mr. Spitzer absolutely was a steamroller, powered by untouchable, sky-high-popularity that forced his fellow Democrats to give him wide latitude.

And with each day, it's more likely that there'll be another steamroller in the 2010 gubernatorial race: Andrew Cuomo, who has used the attorney general's office to collect even higher poll numbers than Mr. Spitzer managed - a 70 percent favorable rating in the newest Siena poll, tops among all New York politicians.

This could give Mr. Cuomo, who figures to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee whether acting Governor David Paterson runs or not, an opportunity to shape next year's Democratic ticket that few previous candidates have enjoyed.

For instance, it's customary for gubernatorial candidates to team-up with a candidate for lieutenant governor and for the pair to run as a team in the September primary (even though they appear on the ballot separately). But there's no guarantee that party leaders or primary voters will sign off on these arrangements: just ask Peter Vallone and Mario Cuomo, whose preferred candidates for L.G. were defeated in the 1998 and 1982 Democratic primaries.

But Mr. Cuomo, like Mr. Spitzer before him, could be in position to force his party - happily or not - to accept his decision well before the primary.

Mr. Spitzer, you might recall, made waves in January '06 - four months before the state convention at which running-mates are usually picked - by anointing Mr. Paterson as his No. 2, a move that infuriated some key Democratic players. Members of the old "Harlem Clubhouse," for example, had struck a deal to support Leecia Eve of Buffalo for L.G. But because of Mr. Spitzer's overwhelming popularity and inevitability, they had no choice but to swallow hard.

"When Eliot Spitzer, the world's smartest man, is telling me that he has picked his candidate and knows that his candidate can win, who am I to question the world's smartest man?" Charlie Rangel asked, very unseriously.

Ms. Eve - along with Jon Cohen and Tom DiNapoli, who were also vying for the L.G. nod at the time of Mr. Spitzer's announcement - exited the race within in days, clearing the field for Mr. Paterson. And when Tom Suozzi launched his hopeless primary bid against Mr. Spitzer, he declined to field his own candidate for L.G., not wanting to take on a second futile mission.

Granted, Mr. Spitzer's influence had its limits - he didn't have much to say as Mr. Cuomo headed off a crowded pack and wrapped up the '06 nomination for A.G. And Mr. Cuomo's influence next year will have its limits, too. In the coming weeks and months, he'll need to decide how exactly where, when and how to throw his weight around.

The biggest factor, obviously, is whether Mr. Paterson follows through on his oft-repeated threat to seek a full term. The latest Siena poll has him trailing Mr. Cuomo by 59 points in a Democratic primary - roughly where the race has stood for eight months now. Almost certainly, Mr. Paterson will bow out early next year.

Assuming that happens, Mr. Cuomo should have the same latitude to pick an L.G. candidate - and to stop any Democratic primary dead in its tracks - that Mr. Spitzer enjoyed. Then, he might have enough capital left over to look further down the ticket.

The pack for the A.G.'s race is (for now) more crowded than it was in '06 - and it lacks anyone with Mr. Cuomo's star power looming over it. Mr. Cuomo could weigh in here - he seems interested in having a female candidate on the ballot; maybe Kathleen Rice or Janet DiFiore - but his attention might better be directed at the comptroller's race, where trouble could loom for Democrats.

There, Mr. DiNapoli, an unelected incumbent (he was installed by the legislature over Mr. Spitzer's strident objections), could actually be vulnerable to a strong G.O.P. challenge - which could come if John Faso decides to enter the race.  In the Siena Poll, 41 percent of voters rated Mr. DiNapoli's performance as fair or poor; only 25 percent gave him favorable marks. In an anti-incumbent year, he could be the low-hanging fruit that Republicans go after.

Bill Thompson, who won sudden respect with his 4.6-point loss in this month's mayoral election, has long been rumored to be interested in Mr. DiNapoli's job. Mr. Cuomo might have three incentives to line up with him: (1) it would ensure that at least one African-American is on the Democratic ticket; (2) it would remove a potentially vulnerable incumbent whose ascension to the office is symbolic of all that voters loathe about Albany; and (3) he hasn't enjoyed the best relationship with Mr. DiNapoli.

Mr. Cuomo's poll numbers are so high that - barring the overhyped possibility of a run by Rudy Giuliani - next November's election won't be much fun. But the next few months may be.

With all the world assuming that the mayor was coasting toward a re-election landslide - and with polls showing him running even with (or even slightly ahead of) Bill Thompson among registered Democrats - most big-name Democrats, in New York and nationally, calculated that there was more to be lost than gained in going after Mr. Bloomberg.

Chuck Schumer, for instance, issued only a perfunctory endorsement of Mr. Thompson, a declaration most notable for Mr. Schumer's staunch insistence that he would have nothing negative to say about the mayor.

And President Obama, who paid three visits to New Jersey on behalf of the Democratic candidate for governor there, struck a back-channel agreement with the mayor not to campaign for Mr. Thompson - and only to endorse him through a spokesman on a Friday afternoon.

But when Election Day rolled around, Mr. Bloomberg barely cleared the 50 percent mark, beating the woefully underfunded Democratic nominee by just 4.6 points - a far cry from the 19-point landslide he enjoyed in 2005. Had Mr. Bloomberg replicated, or even improved upon, that '05 performance this year, the Democratic love-fest would have continued well into his third term - even among his would-be Democratic successors.

Instead, though, last week's results have awakened Democrats (and the press) to the more complicated reality of Mr. Bloomberg's public standing in New York: In short, voters still generally approve of his performance - 70 percent of them, according to the exit poll conducted last week. (That number, it should be noted, is slightly inflated, given that the exit poll missed the closeness of the vote.) But they also resent his heavy-handedness, his obscene campaign spending and his transactional nature.

What's more, New Yorkers' growing personal distaste for their mayor will probably start dragging down his job approval rating soon. Lingering economic anxiety (barring a miraculous turnaround) and the seemingly inevitable voter fatigue that accompanies every third term practically ensures this.

All of this, in turn, will mark the mayor as a big, inviting target in the race to succeed him. And since that race, which won't officially be settled until the September 2013 Democratic primary (or possibly the November '13 general election), is essentially under way now, so is the mini-contest among the contenders to distance themselves from the mayor.

Take the mayor's invitation to Bill de Blasio, the public advocate-elect, and John Liu, the comptroller-elect, to sit with him at a diner - and in full view of the cameras - on the morning after the election. (The diner photo op is one of Mr. Bloomberg's favorites.) Both Mr. Liu and Mr. de Blasio are likely '13 aspirants.

Mr. de Blasio accepted and attended. But Mr. Liu didn't, choosing instead to greet commuters in Queens. Bloomberg aides apparently told reporters that the mayor had been snubbed. Mr. Liu shot back that "A long time ago, the people of New York decided there would be no king nor a monarch in New York City."

A Liu (and de Blasio) adviser later said the quote was taken out of context and that Mr. Liu simply hadn't been given proper advance notice by the mayor. There might be something to that, but either way, Mr. Liu looked very much like a man waiting for an excuse to attack.

The episode probably played better for Mr. Liu among Democrats than it did for Mr. de Blasio. His confrontational demeanor had to catch the eye of a few of the rank-and-file Democrats who are angry that their party rolled over for a billionaire mayor who won by less than five points.

We'll see how cooperative Mr. de Blasio is the next time he gets an invitation. And we'll see how the rest of the potential '13 field reacts.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, for instance, endorsed Mr. Bloomberg's push for a term limits extension last year. Back then, it seemed like a safe play. Mr. Bloomberg was (or seemed) very popular; Mr. Stringer was unknown. But now, look for Mr. Stringer to suddenly discover the dark side of Mr. Bloomberg's tenure.

Anthony Weiner, who let the mayor's hired guns scare him out of this year's race, can read election results as well as anyone. He'll have no problem going after Mr. Bloomberg.

The most interesting case is probably Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose closeness to Mr. Bloomberg - thank her for the term limits extension - caused her headaches in the Democratic primary in her own district. She can cling to the mayor now and probably hang on to her leadership post, but at what long-term cost? Voters nearly denied Mr. Bloomberg a third term last week; they aren't going to vote for a fourth one in 2013.

Sometimes, the verdict is spot on. We knew, for instance, that the bottom had fallen out for George W. Bush when he paid an election eve visit to (then) red-state Virginia in 2005-only to see the candidate he campaigned with, Jerry Kilgore, soundly defeated in the next day's gubernatorial election.

And sometimes it's not: George W. Bush, then basking in near-unanimous public approval, watched his party lose the governorships in both Virginia and New Jersey just two months after 9/11 (although the White House could brag that sort-of-Republican Michael Bloomberg won New York's mayoralty on the same day).

The reality is that New Jersey and (particularly) Virginia, the two states that elect governors in the off-year, have developed a habit over the last four decades of rejecting the candidate from the White House's party, no matter the president's standing in the polls.

But this doesn't stop the media from declaring it a serious blow for the president when he strikes out in The First Major Electoral Test Of His Presidency.

With this year's off-year election is now a week away, Barack Obama is, obviously, scrambling to mute this storyline as much as possible. The perception of a backlash against him and his policies would threaten his immediate agenda-which is now headlined by a health care reform effort that is now reaching a critical phase.

This explains why he's thrown himself with gusto into New Jersey's gubernatorial contest, where his party's candidate has unexpectedly rallied and may actually win. And why the White House has quietly (but insistently) sought to distance itself from Creigh Deeds, the doomed Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, and refused to offer anything but the most grudging, half-hearted support for the equally doomed Bill Thompson here in New York.

But if the Democrats do lose all of these races (and New Jersey is the only one where they have a shot at winning), this effort will be for naught. Republicans will howl that a repeat of Bill Clinton's disastrous first two years-when an off-year wipeout in 1993 portended the G.O.P. revolution of 1994-is at hand, a parallel that the press will be only too happy to entertain.

This is where the Obama White House may have a secret weapon: the special House election in the upstate 23^rd District, where voters will choose Republican John McHugh's successor next Tuesday.

The contest, in a district that last sent a Democrat to Washington in the middle of the 19^th Century, has-in truly bizarre fashion-emerged as the Democrats' best shot at victory this fall. 

Democrats have pegged their hopes on Bill Owens, a local businessman who was recruited into the race (and the party) with the hope that his money and conservative instincts would produce an unlikely pick-up. He's proven a serviceable candidate, but the real reason he now leads in the polls has nothing to do with him and everything to do with a nasty G.O.P. civil war.

Dede Scozzafava, a moderate assemblywoman selected by the district's Republican county party chairmen (in lieu of a primary) as their nominee, has watched her base erode in the face of a third-party candidacy from Doug Hoffman, an accountant who was spurned for the G.O.P. nod by those same county chairs.

Mr. Hoffman has attracted endorsements from some big-name national conservative leaders-most notably Sarah Palin-and is now polling in the high teens, raising big money fast, and threatening to supplant Ms. Scozzafava in second place.

In a way, it's hard to fault conservatives for this somewhat extraordinary insurrection. The selection of Ms. Scozzafava, a gay marriage and card check supporter who has previously run on the Working Families line and whose husband is a top labor leader, is a stick in their eye-and since they were denied a chance to beat her in a primary, their only choices were to field a third party candidate or to swallow hard.

But they'll probably succeed only in fatally splintering what would normally be a winning Republican coalition in the 23^rd, thus ensuring an Owens victory next week-an outcome that would allow the White House to dismiss (credibly) any Republican crowing about Democratic defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City.

There's no way of knowing whether that's what Mr. Obama had in mind this summer  when he chose Mr. McHugh as his Army secretary, a move that triggered the special election. But if Mr. Owens does make it to Congress, you can bet he'll be a White House favorite.

It was all upside: 9/11 had transformed Mr. Giuliani into an exalted figure in New York, where voters, longing for a confident, familiar hand in dark times, were ready to follow his lead. Without Rudy, there would be no Mayor Mike.

That was then.

Today, Mr. Bloomberg is seeking a third term, and if you want to appreciate just how much he's grown out of his predecessor's shadow-and how much that shadow has shrunk since 2001-look no further than the events of the past week.

First, there was the New York 1 mayoral debate, when Mr. Bloomberg and Democrat Bill Thompson were asked if Mr. Giuliani would make a good governor. The question came during the much-mocked (but much-discussed) "lightning round," when candidates must provide a yes/no answer.

Mr. Thompson didn't hesitate to say no. Mr. Bloomberg, looking not entirely happy to be cornered on such a question, managed an unenthusiastic yes.

In a way, it called to mind his grudging admission in 2004 that he'd voted for George W. Bush for president. As a registered Republican back then (and one who had lobbied hard to land the G.O.P. convention for New York), Mr. Bloomberg had little choice but to support the president. But he had nothing to gain by broadcasting this in a city where John Kerry snagged 74 percent of the vote, so he stayed quiet until he was forced to address the topic.

Likewise, after squandering much of his post-9/11 political capital on a presidential run, Mr. Giuliani has become something of a liability with the New York electorate.

Seeking to win the trust of national conservatives, he systematically moved away from the (selectively) liberal brand of Republicanism he practiced in New York. And after his White House campaign flamed out, he embraced the role of attack dog for his friend John McCain, savaging Barack Obama (another local favorite) in a sneering speech at last summer's G.O.P. convention and on the campaign trail last fall. Mr. Giuliani hasn't relented in his attacks now that the campaign is over.  

And he remains as bluntly divisive as ever.

This was evident on Sunday, when Mr. Giuliani told an all-white, heavily Jewish audience in Borough Park that he worried "daily" that "the city might be turned back...to the way it was before 1993. And you know exactly what I'm talking about." ('93, of course, was when Mr. Giuliani defeated David Dinkins to win the mayoralty.)

The comment was vintage Rudy. In the '90s, he derived tremendous political success from pitting people who knew exactly what he was talking about against those who didn't. His style made plenty of voters uneasy, but a plummeting crime rate silenced them-at least until his final few years in office, when his cruel indifference to the appalling excesses of his police force became too much for them.

But even then, New Yorkers were schizophrenic about Mr. Giuliani. Just before 9/11, polls showed voters happy to see him going-even though they wanted the next mayor to follow his policies. Maybe it takes a jerk like Rudy to keep the streets safe, they seemed to be saying.

Mr. Bloomberg, as mayor, has emphatically refuted that notion. The city is as safe as it was under Mr. Giuliani (safer, even), but the tension between City Hall and minority groups has eased considerably.

In that sense, Mr. Giuliani's Borough Park fear-mongering feels utterly anachronistic. He was speaking as part of a two-event campaign swing with the mayor (which the mayor's team-tellingly-didn't promote heavily). In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg might have responded by grabbing a megaphone and shouting, in effect, "Yeah, what he said!" But when Mr. Giuliani's comment made news this week, the mayor ignored it and tried to change the subject-dreading, no doubt, the two other joint appearances the pair are scheduled to make before Election Day.

In the run-up to his January 20 inauguration and in the days that immediately followed it, Barack Obama essentially farmed out the public-relations component of his first major initiative.

Instead of assuming the role as salesman-in-chief for an economic stimulus package that he considered vital to his presidency, Mr. Obama remained above the fray while more polarizing Democratic congressional figures like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank pleaded its case and combated opposition talking points in press conferences and television appearances.

The idea, it seemed, was to free the new president to pursue a public posture of bipartisanship – on January 27, one day before the House voted on the initial version of the stimulus plan, Mr. Obama paid a visit to the weekly meeting of that body’s Republicans – while lesser Democrats did the dirty work, and took the polling hit, that pushing the plan through Congress entailed.

It wasn’t the worst strategy, but the stimulus opposition proved stiffer than most people expected. Republicans lined up in lockstep against it, hyping relatively inexpensive individual line items in an effort to portray the bill as an exercise in extravagant waste, and many of them – like House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, who branded it Speaker Pelosi’s stimulus bill – turned Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to their advantage.

At that point, the White House realized that it was time for the president to forcefully assert his ownership of the plan and to expend some political capital to ensure its passage and to retain the public’s confidence. So he fired up his own party, launched a campaign-style tour and got his bill through. A month later, support for the president – and his handling of the economy – remains impressively high.

For Mr. Obama, the lesson from this can – and should – be applied to the banking crisis, which he has thus far refused to treat with the same forceful, public and specific urgency that marked the end of the stimulus debate. The cost of this reluctance is becoming increasingly clear, while the stakes are much higher than those of the stimulus fight.

When it comes to the banking system, Mr. Obama has farmed out public relations to his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, who – not surprisingly – has been no more effective at generating public confidence and broad support than Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Reid and Mr. Frank were with the stimulus. In the process, Mr. Geithner has earned himself an army of critics from both sides of the aisle (many of them now agitating for his scalp), generated intense skepticism on Capitol Hill, and found himself lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.”

This is partly his fault. For one thing, the self-inflicted tax problems that threatened his own nomination prompted a spooked Obama administration to slow the pace on subsequent appointments, making sure no further problem nominees are submitted to the Senate. This has contributed directly to the high number top-level vacancies at Treasury, which have forced Mr. Geithner into a one-man-band role for the past six weeks. Plus, Mr. Geithner has proven an unpersuasive and evasive communicator in his appearances before Congress.

But the real problem isn’t with Mr. Geithner. At least with the stimulus, it was clear what was being sold, even if the Democrats who were initially doing the selling weren’t very good at it. But when it comes to the banking system, what is the administration even trying to sell? So far, all that has been produced are variations of a vague plan that, it is generally agreed, is unlikely to work and isn’t, in any apparent way, in the taxpayers’ interest. This is what Mr. Geithner, with all of his deficiencies, has been deputized to sell to Congress and the general public.

So far, Mr. Obama’s most detailed statement on the financial crisis came in his address to Congress, when he warned that “while those cost of action will be great, the cost of inaction will be greater.” That’s the easy part. But when it comes to aggressively championing a specific solution, he’s been silent. Mr. Obama has to recognize that the crisis, which threatens his political standing as much as the economy, won’t be solved unless he claims ownership of the issue and treats it like another stimulus. And even then, there are no guarantees.

His reluctance is understandable. Before spending his own political capital, he needs to be confident that he has the right solution. And once he dives into the debate, the resolution won’t be speedy and tidy like it was with the stimulus. Immersion in the banking crisis could bog his presidency down. And if his solution is some type of temporary nationalization, the cries of “socialism” from the right will be loud. But, as he warned Congress, the cost of inaction would be worse.

Mr. Obama needs to settle on a concrete and specific program for the banks. If he’s confident that Mr. Geithner is the right man to implement it, then he should say so – loudly and clearly – and then use the presidential bully pulpit to create the kind of public support and momentum that will give Mr. Geithner the cover he needs to do his job.