Alec Baldwin's Potential Mayoral Run: Pros and Cons

Jack Donaghy Alec Baldwin is running for mayor of New York. No he's not! Just kidding. What he's actually doing is spreading rumors in the media of a possible, nebulous future mayoral run. According to this Times piece, Baldwin wants to run for mayor, but not in 2013. Just sometime in the future. Do we hate this idea? Do we love it? Inside, some pros and cons:

Pros

• He's Alec Baldwin.
• He supports journalism!
• Glengarry Glen Ross displayed his, um, assertive leadership style.
• "Sexual scandal, to me, is meaningless." Can we expect a juicy Clinton-esque Baldwin mayorship?
• He claims to be someone who "doesn't think like rich people do."
• He's self-aware about how his job might make him seem unqualified. "What I do for a living has provided people with an almost bottomless container of video clips of me doing the most asinine things," he told the Times.

Cons

• He's Alec Baldwin.
• We don't buy the whole "man of the people" thing. This is a man who thinks that the Upper West Side is not a wealthy neighborhood. "I am more comfortable living where it seems more middle class, and I have lived there deliberately," he told the Times. It's not the Upper East Side, sure. But Alec, you just can't hide who you are:

• Of course, the biggest con is that he's an actor, not a politician. Then again, Schwarzenegger and Reagan already blazed that trail, and Baldwin seems appropriately humble about his relative lack of political knowledge. He plans to enroll in a master's program to learn how NYC works: "What's the reality of the city unions, of contracts, agreements, teachers, infrastructure, decentralizing, everything? And utilities, Con Ed, the M.T.A. -- how does it all work?" That is a whole lot to learn, buddy.

What do you think? Would you sign on the line which is dotted for Alec?

[NYT]

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]