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 Yorkmagazine 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.
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Seth Barron is an associate editor of City Journal.
This piece originally appeared in Washington Examiner