Spencer Pratt, please call me.
We should talk.
You say you want to be mayor of Los Angeles, but do you really?
I know that being a candidate has rescued you from anonymity after your reality TV career He fell off a cliff. You have supportive CEOs, excited fans, and you've managed to gain social media attention.
But at some point you may have to answer questions from journalists you've been avoiding.
And if you win, you'll have to drive to City Hall five, six, seven days a week, and I don't know if you saw my column a few weeks ago, but the fountain on the south lawn hasn't worked in about 60 years. If you're elected, you better put a wrench in your lunchbox, because no one has figured out how to fix it.
So that's the reality, more or less. And the unions will want what they want, and the socialists on the City Council will be on the prowl, especially after President Trump blew an air kiss across the country and certified his MAGA credentials.
Over 30,000 people are waiting to have their broken sidewalks fixed (I'm not exaggerating), but there's no money, and if you hire several thousand more police officers like you've promised, the city would be bankrupt for the next decade and you'd have to take out a loan to buy a donut.
So call me, like I say, because I think you still have time to change your mind.
If you decide to continue, and if you actually win, you may feel like you're on a sequel to that reality show you did called “I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here,” and you may end up praying that the show gets canceled. The mayor's working hours are long, and wherever he goes, someone will want him to solve this or that problem, and as he walks the halls of power he will remember his campaign promises and hear the constant echo of a phrase by HL Mencken:
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
Can I confess something?
I feel guilty about all this.
I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I feel partly responsible for the fact that you are vying for the position.
Like you, I've been calling problems with LA management, and I've been doing it for years. But I had the good sense not to run for mayor.
Why is that?
Because, unlike you, I know that the solutions are not as easy as we would like them to be.
When Karen Bass first ran, I had a long conversation with her about her homeless plan, among other things. At the end of the day, he asked me for my opinion.
I reminded him that as much as people would like to see the city's top elected official clean up the streets immediately, a mayor is limited by power shared with the City Council.
Because of drug epidemics and untreated mental illness that are largely under the authority of the county.
Due to uncertain financing of the country's capital.
By global forces that transformed the economy and created staggering levels of inequality made even worse by the high cost of housing.
Bass was aware of all that, but said that having worked in Sacramento and D.C., and building relationships with county supervisors, he could build better systems and get better results.
So how has it been?
Not great. And then there is the fire.
As I said before, leaving the country despite forecasts of a high risk of forest fires was probably the worst mistake of his political career.
I don't need to remind you. Having lost his Palisades home, he knows Bass didn't react much, then stumbled into rebuilding, then helped downplay the Fire Department's failure to properly deploy and extinguish the fire that became an inferno.
In short, it has left itself open to a challenge.
And she probably can't believe how lucky she is that you could be her competition in November, if you two beat Councilwoman Nithya Raman and the other candidates in the June 2 primary.
I don't blame you for not having worked in government or politics before. Today, many voters prefer outsiders. But it might have been helpful if you had done something purposeful at some point in your life, like running a successful business or volunteering at a food bank. Were you high school class president or in the Boy Scouts? Anything could help.
Not that being the boyfriend and then husband of someone on an MTV reality show called “The Hills,” which chronicled the work of a woman who went from “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” to an internship at Teen Vogue, can't prepare a young man for the art of statesmanship.
In this culture, you could use that all the way to the White House.
But the flimsy resume might explain, Spencer, why you've been taking so many social media-driven photos of Bass without offering anything of substance.
Let's arrest the narco-zombies.
Okay, so what?
I would advise you to study the manual written by my colleagues Doug Smith and Andrew Khouri on what you can and cannot do as mayor of Los Angeles regarding homelessness. Clearly, he has a lot of work to do. In fact, I remember a quote from a Philadelphia columnist years ago when he said of a politician who was not living up to his position: He's been standing in shallow water for so long that he doesn't realize he can't swim.
If I were you, I would consider the fact that President Trump made the mistake of promising easy solutions. He was going to implement a massive infrastructure program. He was going to implement health care reform that was better and cheaper for everyone. He was going to lower consumer prices from day one, and here we are, with millions of people wondering how they are going to pay their bills while Trump manipulates things so he doesn't have to pay the IRS.
All that said, I'm glad you decided to run, because elected officials need constant reminders that their jobs aren't secure, even when rivals are in over their heads. I'd almost like to see you win, because that's one reality show I'd probably watch.
And I say this even though he once told his talk show partner Alex Jones, who insisted that 9/11 was an inside job and the massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook was a hoax, that the melting of the ice caps is overrated. EITHER, As you explained to Jones, “We've all seen pictures of polar bears swimming toward new chunks of ice.”
When the general elections come and the ice starts to break, will you know how to swim?
