I have before observed that the great tragedy of the 2016 electoral contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t so much what the race was as what it wasn’t: a campaign for mayor of New York City.
Mayor of New York is a big job in politics, or at least it used to be (one can imagine Rudy Giuliani as Norma Desmond: “I am big—it’s the politics that got small!”), and it is a job for which either Trump or Clinton would have been reasonably well-suited.
Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.
