MIKE BLOOMBERG: ABSENTEE MAYOR.

Remember the time Mike Bloomberg jetted off to sunny Bermuda as a monster snowstorm bore down on the five boroughs? Never again, he said afterward, woefully, while the city ever-so-slowly dug itself out of the drifts.

Well, some tigers just can’t change their stripes.

For there he was last week, down in Maryland giving America a firearms intervention while the United Federation of Teachers and his own crack Department of Education negotiators pulled his pants down on teacher-quality reform.

Transforming the city’s public-school system into a national model for quality and effectiveness was once right at the top of Mayor Mike’s personal legacy.

He seems more interested in governing the rest of the country now. Oh, and when he jets off to Bermuda, he takes armed New York City detectives as bodyguards. “The mayor also takes along a police detail when he travels, flying two officers on his private plane and paying as much as $400 a night to put them up at a hotel near his house. . . . Guns are largely forbidden in Bermuda — even most police officers do not use them — but the mayor’s guards have special permission to carry weapons. A spokesman for the Police Department declined to comment.”