With news that failed presidential contender Hillary Clinton is being encouraged by Democrats to run for mayor of New York City, there were many hot takes from both the left and the right, but perhaps none hotter than New York Times columnist Frank Bruni.
Not content to push Clinton as an alternative to current NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio,who has struggled with falling poll numbers and fund-raising scandals and whose term closes at the end of 2017, Bruni does one better. He writes that Clinton becoming mayor of NYC is a way for her to get back at those who failed to remain constantly loyal — like De Blasio — and who outright defeated her, like President-elect Donald Trump.
"[T]here are so many scores she could settle, so many ways she could meddle," Bruni wrote.
It's all fine and well for a columnist to have a little fun dreaming about his failed candidate's reemergence on the political scene. But what Bruni suggests reads more like a strategic plan rather than a daydream:
City building inspectors start to show up daily at Trump Tower, where they find a wobbly beam here, a missing smoke detector there, outdated wiring all over the place. City health inspectors fan out through Trump’s hotels, writing citations for clogged drains in the kitchens and expired milk in the minibars.
The potholes near his properties go unfilled. Those neighborhoods are the last to be plowed. There’s a problem with the flow of water to his Bronx golf course, whose greens are suddenly brown. And the Russian Consulate keeps experiencing power failures. It’s the darnedest thing. Clinton vows to look into it, just as soon as she returns from the Hamptons.
Using political influence to harass political adversaries is not only distasteful but, as the recent investigations of targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, can also be illegal.
But Bruni is not serious, he says. He's just fantasizing. "[B]ut with a glimmer of encouragement," he wrote.
Because news reports indicate the lady herself hasn't outright dismissed the idea and that her backers are intensifying their push. Clinton could dispense with De Blasio for not initially endorsing her in the 2016 presidential election, and get back at Anthony Weiner for being foolish enough to let the FBI "disrupt" her campaign:
But above all there’d be the torturing of Trump, who so gleefully tortures his own political foes and even some of his political friends. (Just ask Chris Christie.) Within a few months of her inauguration, the prevalence of his name on high-rises in Manhattan would pale next to the omnipresence of her face on billboards in all five boroughs.
For Bruni, vengeance is a perfectly reasonable motivation to run for mayor. He never mentions serving the public. If Clinton shares his outlook, it's no wonder she lost to Trump.
