The alarm clock has gone off. There's not enough time for any new candidates to get into the Republican presidential race. New York is candidate-deprived. After that one short moment in 2008 when it looked as if the next president would be either Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani, we've returned to our usual state of being beside the point in presidential politics.
Hillary says she's retiring from the Cabinet after the election, and she's rumored to be yearning for a drama-deprived life in the private sector. Rudy's lifelong ambition to become president of the United States still makes his heart go pitter patter, but even Old 9/11 threw in the towel Tuesday on a 2012 run. Former GOP Gov. George Pataki's "I'm Still Around" campaign for the Republican nomination thankfully sputtered out a month ago.
But maybe there's still time to get someone in the game. How could a state with so many politicians, political junkies and political hangers-on fail to field even an 11th hour vanity candidate? Where's Ed Koch when you need him? Koch is a Democrat, and he's 86, but those are mere details to a man who's devoted his entire life to cultivating attention. (Once, when he was mayor, Koch went to Germany and visited the still-divided city of Berlin. Koch arrived at the Berlin Wall and called out to the East German border guards: "It's me! ... It's Mayor Koch! ... I'm here!")
At minimum, if Koch ran we'd all get a chance to listen to him complain about how there aren't any decent restaurants in Iowa.
Or city Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who single-handedly launched the Occupy Wall Street movement with his doofus handling of a small group of demonstrators. It's not this top copper's only claim to fame: Kelly recently let out word that in its ongoing war on Al-Qaeda, the NYPD now has the ability to blast terrorist planes from the sky. Kelly could run as the only candidate in the field who's already got his own army.
How about one of the Real Housewives of New York? Doesn't matter which one - pick a housewife, any housewife. At minimum, she could promise that in a Real Housewife presidency, nothing whatsoever would be off the record.
Tina Fey? She could do her Sarah Palin impersonation during the debates. Two for the price of one.
I'd like to think this is just a breather, that we're already cultivating contenders for the national ticket in 2016, but that's a heck of a long time to wait, particularly when the average age of our high-profile politicians keeps climbing as the young ones succumb to the nation's largest collection of weird sex scandals.
Something will come up. Politics isn't everything. There's always the Yankees. Oh, wait ...