This is what I feel like:
I oscillate between feel oddly OK about everything and wanting to scream. Just when I settle down, I read something crazy and I feel like I’m going to lose it.
They say that the mayoral race has tightened up — bah, humbug, The Zohran will win.
I’ve ignored Adams for four years. On my honor, I never paid attention to one thing he said or did, or anything written about him. I thought it sucked he was mayor but he didn’t actually bother me. He just performed mayor while people like Jessica Tisch did the work. She really should be mayor but she’s got the charisma of a salamander.
That alone doesn’t disqualify her. It’s simply not true that you need charisma to be NYC mayor. Here’s a Charisma-Grid for mayors in my lifetime1:
Wagner is the first mayor of my early childhood. He’s fused in my unconscious with Eisenhower: the rock solid stability of a golden age before the 1960s2. Jesus, what a difference to today… even the city itself: handsome, functional, clean. (Don’t laugh.) New York City then was leaner and yet more dense. Not so choked with stuff — but that’s the country, isn’t it? We’ve all got so much more cargo than then.3
Charisma is just one variable among many. Wagner and Beame were elected during eras when party loyalty and institutional trust mattered more than personal magnetism. I think the obsession with charisma spikes during crisis or fragmentation. Lindsay and Koch emerged when NYC was fractured: racial tensions, fiscal collapse, crime. Charisma became a survival tool. Since I don’t see this crisis and fragmentation lessening any time soon, Tisch’s lack of charisma is a handicap.
There could be a time when, even in the midst of crisis, people just get tired of charisma, and go for a soothing, competent presence. But that’s too far in the future and too speculative. For now, we need charisma.
I don’t think I’ll be able to ignore Mamdani. I mean, effortlessly, the way I ignored Adams.
If the Democrat machine took a Mamdani win as an opportunity to clean house, it might have been worth it. But they won’t. They are constitutionally incapable of change. As for the NYC Republicans—don’t make me laugh. They’re a non-factor. I cannot explain why some grown up business people don’t take over the Republican party of NYC—I just cannot.
The city is a vast machine that just chugs along and until something truly shocking happens, nothing will change. In that sense, it’s antifragile in the Talebian sense — it’s not tough, it actually gains from disorder.
Trump endorsed Cuomo. Ha, that crafty devil. It’s the kiss of death. That’s another reason I won’t be able to ignore Mamdani. He’s the new AOC, a walking Republican attack ad. Plus Trump wants him as a foil; a Mamdani win sets the table for a showdown between the two guys from Queens at the OK Corral. What’ll it be? An ICE raid? A crime on the subway and the national guard takes over the system?
Courtesy of Microsoft Co-Pilot, so sue me.
And yeah, I know that it wasn’t so golden, but that’s how it seemed to us.
Necessitating giant bags and backpacks carried everywhere. Men used to venture forth with a wallet in their back pocket, with with a handbag. Now you have to carry all this shit with you.
I wonder if things will get bad enough under the Zohran (never gonna call him anything else now) that New Yorkers welcome a Trump federal intervention.