Everybody in the Empire State is watching Republicans such as Governor Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Bruno, and Mayor Bloomberg fight over whether to raise taxes on commuters’ incomes, the incomes of the rich, New York’s property owners, or a variety of other innocent citizens. The Republican to watch, however, is President Bush. Mr. Bush is the only one arguing for the proper solution to a sluggish economy and the revenues it is pulling down: cutting tax rates on the margin to spur growth.

And we can’t help thinking that it’s no coincidence that Mr. Bush is the only Republican thriving in New York in the current climate, despite constant griping from the Big Apple’s mayor about a lack of federal aid. The president is polling at 58% approval, according to a poll released yesterday by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. This is up from 50% in February. “That a president fresh off a wartime win would poll higher than most wannabes isn’t surprising,” the institute’s director, Maurice Carroll, told the Associated Press. “What will surprise many is that President Bush does so well against Senator Clinton.” That’s right. In heavily Democratic New York State, a Republican president is more popular than the Democratic junior senator. Mrs. Clinton, who has said she will serve her full term in the Senate, forgoing a presidential run, polled at 52% approval — 59% want her to stay on he sidelines in 2004.

The difference comes on tax policy. Mr. Bush is pushing for more than half a trillion dollars in tax cuts over the next decade. In contrast, Mrs. Clinton — along with Senator Schumer — has voted against even the $350 billion in tax cuts to which liberal Republicans have assented. Even these estimates for the size of the cuts are tricky, because they rely on 10-year estimates for the effect of the tax cuts on future revenues. But the bot tom line is Mr. Bush is for bigger tax cuts.

And how are New York’s Republicans faring in comparison to Mr. Bush? Mr. Pataki has just seen his poll numbers plummet to their lowest point since 1995 — 43% approve of the job the governor is doing, 45% disapprove. The governor has been proclaiming to anyone willing to listen that he will not raise “job-killing taxes.” But savvy New Yorkers know that the governor’s new catch phrase has a catch: The governor is bound to decide that some particular tax, arrived at through negotiations with Mr. Bruno and Assembly Speaker Silver, would not kill jobs and can be raised. The governor has already decided, for example, that increasing the sales tax on clothing will not kill jobs.

As for the “Republican” mayor of New York City, Mr. Bloomberg saw his honeymoon end and his poll numbers plummet after he spurned his campaign promises and put through a property tax increase. A Quinnipiac poll put the mayor’s approval rating at 41%, versus 46% disapproval. That same poll found that by a two-to-one margin, New Yorkers preferred service cuts to higher taxes.

Lower taxes, however, don’t have to mean a lower quality of life in the city or the state. First of all, there is plenty of waste to be cut, no matter what the politicians say. And second, cutting taxes — especially in an overtaxed state like New York, which loses business and residents to nearby, lower-tax states — can spark growth, increasing government revenues in the medium term.

New York State hasn’t gone in the Republican column in a presidential election since President Reagan won his second term in 1984. And a lot of things can happen between now and the election that is still 18 months away. Reuters reported yesterday that Mr. Bush’s own pollster, Matthew Dowd, sent out a memo to supporters warning that Mr. Bush’s lofty poll numbers are certain to decline as the Democratic voter base solidifies ahead of the election campaign.

But for the first time in 20 years, it’s starting to look like a new Republican president — who has been compared to Mr. Reagan many times for his message of limited government and for the moral clarity he brings to foreign affairs — at least has a crack at carrying the Empire State. It’s none too soon for Messrs. Pataki, Bruno, and Bloomberg to start asking themselves what Mr. Bush is doing that they’re not.