Trying to lop off glycoproteins is not why de Blasio got into politics. De Blasio has always looked past New York, has never hidden his national ambitions. Six months ago, he was a moderately credible presidential candidate. I went to a de Blasio event in Des Moines, Iowa, and was struck by the adulation directed his way. I was even more struck by how genuinely happy de Blasio seemed. After concluding his stump speech, he stayed for a good half hour, meeting voters, shaking hands. Through it all, he smiled.

Now he is telling people to wash their hands and cough into their elbows. Of course, every politician in the United States is lathering constituents in the same hand-washing, elbow-coughing advice. But de Blasio seems more irritated at having to do so than most.

He has indicated that irritation with the subtlety of a Times Square advertisement. As all New York tabloid readers know, de Blasio trekked daily from Manhattan to Brooklyn to exercise at the same gym he frequented before becoming mayor. De Blasio continued to travel back to Brooklyn right up to the day he ordered all gyms closed. That last gym trip has become the stuff of legend, an act of petulant defiance from which de Blasio’s reputation will probably never recover.

Leadership is never more apparent than when it is missing. De Blasio was slow to recognize the danger, telling New Yorkers to keep to their ordinary routines—as he did his—even after the World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

De Blasio has often been spotted walking in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, near his old house, even as most New Yorkers are confined to their homes and some New Yorkers fight the coronavirus in overcrowded hospitals. You may have heard that there are parks in Manhattan. Gracie Mansion, where de Blasio lives, is located inside one, an esplanade that follows the East River as it opens gloriously to embrace the Bronx and Queens. The same convoy of SUVs that whisks him to Brooklyn could get him to Central Park in five minutes tops.

I imagine that de Blasio knows where Central Park is, more or less. That’s rather beside the point. Throughout the coronavirus crisis, he has evinced no passion for New Yorkers, or New York. When he gave an interview to MSNBC last Sunday, what marked his face was not exhaustion but exasperation.

In fact, he hasn’t given up on the possibility that he can do nothing in this crisis other than attack Trump, just as he did in his days as a presidential contender. “He’s not acting like a commander in chief, because he doesn’t know how,” de Blasio said on MSNBC two weeks ago. “He should get the hell out of the way.” Even so, he has continued to plead with Trump to do everything in his power to help New York, making for an odd combination of bluster and helplessness.