Clinton 2017: She won’t be a president, so why not a mayor?

But, in dramatic contrast with many other large U.S. cities, New York saw crime rates at or near record lows in 2016. New York’s troubles show up mainly in other areas: One in four subway trains is delayed on any given weekday, one in five on the weekend. The city recently celebrated — though celebration is hardly apt — the opening of one small part of the Second Avenue subway line, nearly a century after the project was begun and at a price that not only wildly exceeds early estimates but that also exceeds, by multiples, the cost of similar projects in places such as Barcelona, with Spain not being famous for the efficiency of its public sector. De Blasio’s school-reform plan has turned out to be a fiasco, with fewer than 5 percent of the schools targeted meeting their goals, which were modest to begin with.

But a great deal of what ails New York is not directly within the control of the mayor, and many critical institutions, such as the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, involve an unwieldy mix of state and local players from New Jersey to Connecticut.

That is where Mrs. Clinton, with her global celebrity and her big national footprint (assuming it remains large), might be of some real use. If she were interested, Mrs. Clinton has the sort of stature that might allow her to rally City Hall, Albany, Trenton, the teachers’ unions, and the other relevant actors from Washington to Hartford behind something like a sensible program for our largest city. Red-staters can scoff all they like at New York and its problems: A functional and thriving United States of America needs a functional and thriving New York.

There is another fellow who might very well have made a good mayor of New York, but it seems he’ll be busy with other work for the next four years, possibly eight.