O-Bla-vious to his failings

IF Al Smith was, as FDR called him, a “happy warrior,” what are we to call Bill de Blasio? I nominate him as the “oblivious warrior.” Not even midway through his second term, New York’s mayor has a strange itch for something more. Inheriting a treasury bursting with cash, he’s spending the city to the brink of disaster, and now he’s tired of the job. No doubt he’s tired of throwing money at problems, only to see the problems grow worse. And he’s tired, oh so tired, of being too good for the people who entrusted him with the second-toughest job in America. So de Blasio searches for support and love in all the wrong places. Certain theret is an audience for what he sells, he’s been going to Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, testing his reception in the early 2020 states. Surely the good progressives there would realize what a gem he is. Their warmth would start a fire that would burn across the nation as Democrats everywhere had the epiphany that he should be their man to take on President Trump.

Alas, de Blasio’s greatness remains a tightly held secret. The crowds he draws are so tiny they can’t honestly be called crowds.

A total of 65 people showed up to two events in Iowa, while an event in New Hampshire drew just 20 people, and 14 of those were on a panel, leaving an audience of six.

He can’t even attract as many people as there are Democrats running for president! Put another way, he could meet more voters on a subway car.

Yet de Blasio is immune to the embarrassment and the waste of time, even gushing to a TV interviewer, “It was great. It was really great.”

The oblivious warrior. Oblivious to how ridiculous he looks by believing he merits even curiosity on the national stage. Oblivious to his reputation as a man with no cause except finding a job where he can fleece the public without working hard.

Unfortunately, de Blasio is also oblivious to the harm he is doing to the fabric of New York. His routine of laziness, incompetence and corruption, multiplied by nearly 5¹/2 years in office, is taking a serious toll on the quality of life.

The signs of decline are everywhere. Streets are filthy, traffic is a constant horror, and the ranks of vagrants are growing. The one success, keeping crime low, is now threatened, with murder rates spiking.

The mental-health program de Blasio and his wife boast about is a perfect metaphor for his tenure. It has a lofty aim and is wildly expensive — but amounts to little more than a self-promotion stunt. Indeed, it’s almost as if the program was created just to give Chirlane McCray something to do and something for de Blasio to talk about around the country.

Yet in a city where hundreds, if not thousands, of people with obvious mental illness roam the streets and sleep in the subways, the program, called ThriveNYC, has blown through $1 billion with little or no results. Even the spendthrift City Council wants to know where the money went.

While they’re at it, council members might also ask where the $800 million went for de Blasio’s Renewal program in schools that produced almost no student gain.

Then there’s the economicdevelopment program that spent $300 million — and enticed just 3,000 private jobs. My bet is that even the 3,000 is inflated.

But the damage de Blasio is doing isn’t limited to wasting taxpayer money. He’s also deliberately stoking racial resentment, especially with his push to impose quotas on the city’s selective high schools.

He and his chancellor, Richard Carranza, would penalize mostly high-achieving Asian-American students by turning their merit into a reason to discriminate against them. His claim that the schools are “segregated” because their populations don’t reflect the school system at large is a preposterous scam.

It is the job of de Blasio and Carranza to improve all schools and help get lagging students better prepared for the selective high school exam. They could support and copy the best charter schools, which are proving in Harlem and elsewhere that at-risk children, in the right environment, can match any students anywhere.

But no, City Hall fights charters tooth and nail, reflecting the hypocrisy of its ostensible racial concerns. Meanwhile, the latest results of the elite high school exam, where black and Latino students scored just a combined 10.6 percent of offers to the top schools, with another 2.3 percent going to biracial students, is an indictment of City Hall’s failure, not a reason to destroy those schools.

Asked recently if he would resign as mayor if he decided to run for president, de Blasio said no.

What a pity. It would be a great chance for him to finally do something good for New York.