To this day, well more than a decade after the deed was done, an empty pedestal stands in one of New Orleans’ most prominent locations.

The pedestal, some 50 feet high, once housed one of the great triumphs of public art. It was a magnificent statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee built in 1884, and the small park around the statue was known — and still is known — as Lee Circle.

Lee’s statue was never very controversial in New Orleans, but amid the Hard Left’s outbreak of bowdlerization in the 2010s, it suddenly became a “public nuisance” in the eyes of the city’s mayor.

Whose name was Mitch Landrieu.

Landrieu spent most of the second term of his highly-unsuccessful tenure as New Orleans’ mayor (an unremarkable status; every mayoral tenure since that of Vic Schiro in the 1960s has been highly-unsuccessful) tilting at Lee’s windmill before finally toppling the statue off that pedestal and creating one of America’s most pathetic eyesores in its place.

Landrieu didn’t stop at Lee, of course — he also sent the New Orleans Fire Department to get rid of a statue of Jefferson Davis, which was later relocated to Davis’s memorial site in Mississippi, a gorgeous equestrian statue of P.G.T. Beauregard which had graced the entrance to City Park in New Orleans, and another monument — one to a riot staged by Democrats in New Orleans in order to seize power from the Reconstruction-era Republican government in office at the time.

The Lee and Beauregard statues are currently gathering moss in a police impoundment lot in one of New Orleans’ slum neighborhoods, or were, the last I checked.

Landrieu’s legacy was that of destruction. Not renewal.

He wasn’t the mayor who brought New Orleans back from Katrina. Ray Nagin, whose famous meltdown on CNN following the hurricane and the flood that deluged the city stands as one of the worst political moments of the current century, was actually the man deserving credit for that. Nagin didn’t even have to do much — it was the private sector, together with a mountain of federal aid dollars, which rebuilt New Orleans. Nagin’s second term, which began in 2006 with a race-baiting electoral campaign that bested, ironically enough, Mitch Landrieu, was marked more by anarchy than anything else. It turned out that anarchy was a lot more effective economic development strategy than the hard-core socialism favored by New Orleans’ political class.

What Landrieu did was to strangle the recovery by bringing back the hard-core socialism.

And New Orleans has not recovered, nor will it likely recover, from the damage Landrieu did — to its public art, and to its economy.

I mention all of this because Mitch Landrieu is somehow attempting to make himself relevant as a — no, this can’t possibly be true — presidential candidate in 2028?

Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans and a central figure in recent federal infrastructure efforts, has quietly begun exploring a potential run for the presidency in 2028. During a recent gathering of Democratic activists and the Young Democrats of America in his hometown, Landrieu delivered an unscripted and impassioned speech that many observers categorized as the opening notes of a future campaign.

Drawing on his extensive experience leading New Orleans through its recovery after Hurricane Katrina, Landrieu spoke to the crowd about the necessity of dreaming about what America “should be.” He emphasized that the country cannot simply return to the status quo but must instead look forward to a new day. His message centered on the idea of constructing a future that corrects the mistakes of the past, a theme he applied to both his local governance and the national political landscape.

I neglected to mention Landrieu’s role as Joe Biden’s “infrastructure czar.” Remember that? You might also remember the hundreds of billions of dollars the Trump administration reclaimed last year from the trillion-dollar fund that Landrieu was too lazy to shovel out the door. That was another bit of Landrieu’s “extensive experience” and “unique strength” that somehow qualifies him to dream about what America should be.

Political allies, including Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, have praised Landrieu’s charisma and his ability to connect with a wide array of voters. Lucas noted that Landrieu possesses a unique strength in relating to diverse communities, a quality that could be pivotal in a competitive primary field. Supporters believe his “retail politics” approach, honed on the streets of New Orleans, provides him with a level of authenticity that resonates with Americans who feel the social contract has been broken.

Despite his high-profile background, Landrieu faces a crowded field of potential 2028 contenders, many of whom have already begun the groundwork of staff building and fundraising. At 65 years old, Landrieu himself has acknowledged that if he is to pursue the presidency, this current window is likely his final opportunity. While he has not yet established a formal campaign operation, his recent speeches have focused on rebuilding the Democratic coalition and addressing the resentment felt by many workers across the country.

Mitch Landrieu will not be the Democrats’ nominee in 2028. Nobody is going to give him money to run a presidential campaign; it’s insane to think that he’s qualified for that job or that a straight white guy from a red state where he couldn’t crack 30 percent of the vote in a statewide election has any hope of winning the nomination. (RELATED: Gretchen Whitmer’s Cringe Wokeness)

But there is a certain fascination one has to have with the genus of political animal that encompasses a Mitch Landrieu. He is a freak, of sorts, to be examined.

There is a level of sociopathic narcissism inherent in these dried-up has-been pols — the Andrew Cuomos, the Mitch Landrieus, and even the Mark Sanfords — which compels them to continue running for office or seeking the public limelight after they’ve been disgraced or put to pasture.

Small-d democratic politics was designed for citizen leadership. We impose term limits on most major offices (though unfortunately not on the House and Senate) because we want to put some distance between ourselves and the Landrieus and Cuomos. Our Founding Fathers understood that the Roman Republic was superior to the Roman Empire because Cincinnatus returning to the plow is a healthier ethical ideal than Caligula trying to appoint his horse as consul.

Or Mitch Landrieu defenestrating the various landmarks of New Orleans in order to please his African-American mistress, as the inside story went.

We recognize that there is much truth in the old joke that politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

But there is a problem. In the mass media age, we have mixed politics with celebrity, and it’s a toxic mix on both sides of that equation. (RELATED: Meet Neppo Marx, the Democrats’ Great White 2028 Hope)

It’s toxic because celebrities think, for no good reason, that their opinions on politics are fodder for public consumption, and this gives us grotesqueries like George Takei, Jane Fonda, and Robert DeNiro.

But on the other side, it gives us people like Mitch Landrieu who think that holding political office offers validation in the form of celebrity, and the heady mix of TV cameras and the power over one’s fellow man afflicts them like the most powerful virus imaginable. For them, what would be utterly intolerable — putting one’s family through the sewer-pipe that is the modern political campaign, complete with the nonstop defamation, personal attacks, vilification, death threats, intraparty backstabbing, bribery, extortion, and abject insincerity of every aspect of running for office — is something like paradise.

They would rather endure it — and inflict it on others — than anything else on God’s green earth.

You can’t ask a Mitch Landrieu — or an Eric Swalwell, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, or Gavin Newsom (or a Lindsey Graham or John Kasich, for that matter) — to give up politics. No more than you could ask a vampire to take a walk in the sun.

Of course, Landrieu is talking about running for president. He won’t likely do it, but not because he doesn’t want to.

So yes, he will give high-sounding speeches about remaking America in his image. It’s a grift, and we can all see it as that. Landrieu is begging for some rich sucker to notice him and act as his stakehorse for an even bigger grift — actually running for office.

But the one thing about the sociopathic narcissists who latch onto politics for their validation is that if you ever give them power over you, it’s just like inviting the vampire into your house.

He’ll come in and suck you dry.

Just like Mitch Landrieu sucked New Orleans dry.

Anybody who can’t give up politics and go back to the plow is someone who shouldn’t be hanging around power. Landrieu needs a political stake through his heart. Maybe it’ll be up to the Democrats’ voters to do that.

But hopefully it won’t get that far.

READ MORE from Scott McKay:

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No, You Morons, Iran Has Not ‘Won.’

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