New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s presidential campaign became an immediate national joke, though it is no more objectively absurd than many other candidacies that haven’t attracted attention from late-night hosts. Mayor of New York is, after all, a big job with actual executive responsibilities, and de Blasio has been elected to the office twice. His record is decidedly mixed, and in many cases unimpressive, but the city is still standing.
Yet the spectacle of de Blasio seeking America’s highest office is unquestionably ridiculous, especially to the people who are most familiar with him. De Blasio himself has tacitly acknowledged this phenomenon, telling Rolling Stone in 2015 that, “a lot of people outside New York City understand what happened in the first year of New York City better than the people in New York City.” In 2017, he told New York magazine that if only New Yorkers were less jaded, they would throw parades in his honor.
The mayor’s grandiosity about his own achievements is silly, but New Yorkers are used to public figures who exaggerate their accomplishments — the current occupant of the White House didn’t develop his rhetorical panache in taciturn New England, certainly. But all the great New York self-aggrandizers spike their amour-propre with a dose of wit and a knowing wink. De Blasio, on the other hand, combines brashness with a mix of condescension, prickliness, and insincerity that tracks as pompous and undeservedly smug.
[Also read: Bill de Blasio polling at 0%, unfavorable rating highest among 2020 candidates]
The mayor has attained notoriety for his practice of going to the Y in Park Slope, Brooklyn, every day, in the middle of the morning, 11 miles from his residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in order to do some desultory stretching and lope on an elliptical trainer. Afterward, he goes to his favorite café for coffee and a pastry. The odd profligacy of this habit is compounded by his weird justifications for it: He recently informed the public that being driven by armed convoy to the gym in Brooklyn is his way of staying grounded. “I come from that neighborhood in Brooklyn,” he explained. “That’s my home. I go there on a regular basis to stay connected to where I come from and not be in the bubble that I think for a lot of politicians is a huge problem.”
In the run-up to his 2017 reelection, de Blasio was confronted with a mass transit service in decline: Delays and interruptions in service were up, ridership was down, and the subways were turning into an unofficial day room for the city’s homeless and mentally ill population. The mayor embraced a novel approach to the crisis: cheerfully proclaiming that it wasn’t his responsibility. “Say it with me, ‘Cuomo’s MTA,’” he announced at dozens of town halls throughout the city, making sure everyone understood that fixing the subways wasn’t his job.
He was partially right — the subways and buses are mostly under the control of the governor, though they are policed by the NYPD, which answers to the mayor. But the idea of any of de Blasio’s predecessors in City Hall making a virtue of impotence in this way would have been unimaginable. The New York City mayoralty is the ultimate can-do job: Most mayors have been criticized for trying to expand the reaches of their power, not basking in its limits.
Perhaps the oddest moment of de Blasio’s mayoralty was when he decided, in 2017, that he would restage the Mets’ 1986 World Series celebration at City Hall, in honor of Dwight “Doc” Gooden, who unfortunately was “unable to attend” the original festivities. What prevented Gooden from being there with his teammates, 31 years before? He was holed up in his cocaine dealer’s apartment on a binge. One thing led to another, and “the next thing you know, the parade’s on, and I’m watching the parade on TV. Here I am in the projects in a drug dealer’s apartment with guys I don’t even know, with drugs in the house, watching it. It’s a horrible feeling.” No doubt it was, but Gooden had future opportunities to celebrate, as he pitched for the Yankees when they won the World Series in 1996 and 2000. Nevertheless, to “right the wrong” of 1986, as de Blasio put it, the mayor hung banners and bunting from City Hall and erected a stage so Gooden could give a speech and be “honored,” receiving the Key to the City, no less.
De Blasio operates in a haze of incomprehensible gestures, unctuous sentiment, nasty dismissiveness, and a sense of utter entitlement. From his perspective, it makes perfect sense that he would run for president. But from the perspective of the rest of the world, where mediocrity is not supposed to merit reward, his ambitions appear as ridiculous as his record.
Seth Barron is the associate editor of City Journal.
