Mayor Bloomberg is having an anger management problem with Albany, to judge by they way he ducked out of the proceedings in Albany Monday night and then by his press conference yesterday, where he lashed out at the Assembly over the speaker’s refusal to endorse the mayor’s congestion pricing plan. The mayor, who has recently been studying negotiating techniques at the Spitzer School of Leadership, got himself quoted by the Associated Press as saying “some people have guts and lead from the front and some people don’t” and also got himself linked on the national news agenda setter — the Drudge Report — under the headline “NYC Mayor Concedes Defeat on Traffic Fees … “

This is not the way to set out on the last quarter of one’s mayoralty. While we have our issues with Mr. Bloomberg on some policies — on others we’re with him foursquare — the best thing for him to do is use the coming months to prepare a take-off nationally. This is a time for him to engage himself in presidential-grade issues, issues that are far larger than whether motorists will have to pay $8 to drive south of 86th Street in Manhattan. We happen to think that the national debate would be well-served by a mayor who is one of the best strategic thinkers in business and government.

If the mayor feels frustrated on congestion pricing, for example, imagine how President Bush — or Senator Kennedy, for that matter — feels about immigration after the defeat in the Senate. Immigration is a presidential topic, one on which the mayor is an advocate of a clear, realistic, pragmatic, open, and growth-oriented approach. There are huge blocks of voters up for grabs on this issue. It is one where a middle-ground is opening up between the rightists and the leftists. Here is an opportunity for the mayor to enter the fray on an issue where there is differentiation between him and the others, where he has automatic authority as the mayor of a city that is the gateway for millions of immigrants, legal and otherwise.

Another natural topic for Mr. Bloomberg is the great contest going on now between Europe and America over capital markets. This is a strategic issue, and errors in Washington — particularly the tendency to overregulate, as in Sarbanes Oxley — have cost us big. The mayor, along with Governor Spitzer and Senator Schumer, has started to sound the alarm on this. It’s a far better issue than the debate over what level of privacy protection ought to be attached to gun data, an issue on which a bipartisan majority in Congress is solidly united against the mayor’s position. It would be an exaggeration to say that the mayor has better bona fides on this than any national political figure since Hamilton. But at the moment, the issue is up for grabs.

As is a rich seam of voters referenced in an illuminating dispatch by Robin Toner on page one of Monday’s New York Times. She talked about a new populism spurring Democrats on the economy, one that looks like it is beckoning the party toward a campaign based on tax increases and protectionism, including immigration protectionism. Here is a chance for the mayor to leap in with his combination of idealism, experience, and pragmatism. It is more presidential an issue than trans-fat or illegal guns.

And then there’s the war. Right now the best candidates on the war are Messrs. Giuliani and McCain, but the Democrats are careering so far to the left on this issue that they are going to leave at least some of the center-left and center-right voters up for grabs. The mayor has been largely silent on the war, but in ways that suggest he is no mindless dove. He has under his command a New York Police Department that includes one of the finest intelligence agencies in the world. This is a moment for Mr. Bloomberg, mayor of the city that bore the brunt of the attacks that signaled the outbreak of this war, to start focusing on the course to which he would hew in this war. We have no doubt the country would like to hear from him.

Mr. Bloomberg is an American original. And he is at a point in his mayoralty where he has been so successful — and so popular — that he doesn’t want or need to be popping Rolaids for breakfast because of Sheldon Silver. We say this in the friendliest sense. It would be better for New York for Mr. Bloomberg to walk away from the feuds with Mr. Silver and the legislative gridlock in Albany. Leave that to Eliot Spitzer. Let the mayor step up to the national stage. It would be better for New York and better for the rest of America, too.