Alec Baldwin, Mayoral Candidate?

Because Anthony Weiner probably won’t, and probably shouldn’t, run for mayor of New York in 2013, Alec Baldwin has shown an interest in the job. This week, he wrote a teasing tweet on the subject, and a friend of his, speaking to the Daily, quoted him saying, “Hey, maybe this changes the race. The dynamics have shifted.”

In 2008, when I spent time with Baldwin for a Profile, his mind was more on the politics of divorce, family court, and child custody—he had just written a book about this. But he did say, almost in passing, “I’ve always wanted to be President of the United States.” At the time, we were circling Shelter Island on his leather-trimmed speedboat—a surprisingly David Niven-ish accessory. Baldwin, who has a long and engaged interest in politics (and who left George Washington University in a sulky mood, after failing to be elected student-body president) steered his boat while carefully laying out the priorities of a Baldwin presidency: the federal budget, Iraq, school scholarships, energy policy.

He also showed the muscular, authoritarian side of his liberalism. He recalled how, years before, in Los Angeles, he had considered buying a gun to protect his family:

You have some movie imagery in your head, like “Straw Dogs,” or “Death Wish,” or “A Clockwork Orange…” I had some image of coming home and somebody doing something terrible to my wife, or my daughter, God forbid, and I thought: “I’m going to blow your head against that wall, like a Pollock painting. I’m going to make a Pollock painting out of your head.”

In other words:

I’m a pretty liberal person, but my liberalness comes from what the government should be doing with its excess of wealth. That doesn’t mean I’m not a law-and-order person.”

Photograph by Martin Schoeller.