Quite a situation is shaping up as the politicians maneuver in respect of the presidential race in 2008. It turns out, according to a new Gallup poll, that a New Yorker, Mayor Giuliani, leads the Republican pack, with 73% of GOP respondents ranking him as an “acceptable” candidate. And a New Yorker, Senator Clinton, is in the second spot on the Democratic side, with a 69% “acceptable” rating. Governor Pataki, who used to be misunderestimated even in New York, is traveling frequently to New Hampshire and Iowa and has raised more than $630,000 over the past three months. Then there’s Mayor Bloomberg, whose behind-the-scenes explorations of a possible presidential run are far more serious than has yet been perceived. It raises at least the possibility of a New York trifecta, with the Democrats running Mrs. Clinton, the Republicans Mr. Giuliani, and an independent campaign running Mr. Bloomberg.

We’re all in favor of it. Certainly New York has a pedigree for presidents. No fewer than eight commanders in chief have cut their teeth in New York politics before moving onto the national stage. Martin Van Buren represented the Empire State in the Senate and was elected governor before accepting President Jackson’s appointment to be secretary of state and gaining national prominence. Millard Fillmore served the state in the House. Grover Cleveland and both Roosevelts were governors. Chester Arthur was collector of the Port of New York. FDR ran against a fellow New Yorker when he defeated Thomas Dewey in 1944. But this could be the first time in history a three-way race featured contenders from the same state. And what a field:

On the Republican side, Mr. Giuliani has three things going for him. He’s a law-and-order politician who can boast that he made the city livable again. As a federal prosecutor, excesses in taking on Wall Street aside, he built his reputation going after organized crime. As mayor, his innovations in law enforcement paid off in crime rates down by 57% and a Federal Bureau of Investigation ranking as the safest large city in America. Few candidates will be able to claim a clearer sense of what’s at stake for America in the war on terror than Mr. Giuliani or a greater propensity to stand on principle (he had Yasser Arafat ejected from Lincoln Center in 1995 and tore up that Saudi check for $10 million). On welfare reform, he cut the assistance rolls by better than 50% and improved the proportion of adults on assistance who are also occupied in some form of workfare to about 80%. With entitlement reform a looming issue, Mr. Giuliani’s successes will be a strong selling point. And despite his relative liberalism on abortion and gay rights, the early indications are that Mr. Giuliani is resonating with conservative religious voters.

On the Democratic side, Mrs. Clinton would be a formidable challenger. She raises the ire of conservatives like few Democrats can, yet she defies easy categorization as a far-left liberal. She has stuck by her support for welfare reform even though the issue has been a sore spot with her party’s liberal base. She has remained relatively hawkish on Iraq while other senators-cum-presidential candidates have been abandoning the struggle. She is tempering her pro-choice position on abortion by speaking of such losses as a “sad, even tragic choice.” A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Douglas Besharov, recently told the Washington Post: “I believe she holds what we sometimes call traditional values about personal responsibility and family.” Her early foray into healthcare reform taught many of us just how much we disagree with her on the substance, but it also gave her a deep grounding on an issue that has only been growing as the 2008 election nears. Those who say Mrs. Clinton couldn’t resonate in Middle America haven’t studied the upstate campaign that elevated her to the Senate.

Into this field could step Michael Bloomberg, a dark horse in many respects. Mr. Bloomberg was a registered Democrat before he switched to the Republican Party for clearer sailing to the 2001 general election ballot, but his political ideology can be as hard to pin down as Mrs. Clinton’s. It’s easy to imagine him running for president as a member of either party or as an independent. Whichever ticket he appeared on, he’d bring a record of proven management ability. One advantage over Mr. Giuliani would be Mr. Bloomberg’s success with education reform, on which he has been an aggressive proponent of innovative reforms like charter schools. He has shown he can develop a strong cabinet, with a number of figures — such as Commissioner Kelly and Chancellor Klein — emerging under Mr. Bloomberg as individuals of national stature. That speaks enormously well not only of them but the mayor. The mayor’s personal fortune would free him from many of the fundraising constraints that bind most other candidates.

Most of all, in our view, Mr. Bloomberg also has the advantage of having been misunderestimated only to win re-election in an astonishing landslide. It turns out that for all his annoying policy hangups, such as his nanny-state campaign against smoking and French fries, he’s not a divider but a uniter. He may be enormously wealthy, but he comports himself with a certain kind of modesty that we, and many New Yorkers, have come to like a great deal.

And we haven’t even gotten to Governor Pataki, who is running hard, if in a low key way, at the moment. All four New Yorkers have emerged as loyal supporters of Israel and as proponents of America as a nation of immigrants, to mention two other issues that will be on the minds of voters in 2008.

If each presidential quadrennial is like the baseball season, we haven’t even reached the All-Star break of the 2006 midterms yet and it’s still on the early side to be speculating about exactly which teams will make the play-offs.The heavy hitters are starting to separate themselves from the field, however, and the number of New Yorkers in the running suggests the state may be on the verge of a unique moment in presidential history. If any two of these candidates win their parties’ pennants in 2008, New Yorkers could be in for a subway series that would rival the Mets-Yankees faceoff in 2000. If three emerge in the finals, it would be an astonishing achievement for New Yorkers, whatever their politics.