Once, cities were fun.
I used to love walking around the District of Columbia, visiting sites such as the National Archives Building and the Lincoln Memorial, paeans in stone to our greatness.
Every city had its unique charm: New York’s Rockefeller Center, Seattle’s Pike Place Market and Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Now it takes a hardy soul to visit America’s once proud cities without an armed escort.
Songs were written about our cities in their heyday: “New York, New York – It’s a Wonderful Town,” “Chicago, Chicago!” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Today, you could leave your wallet and car there too.
Our cities have become the face of the Democratic Party, akin to the creature in “Alien” on a bad hair day.
Even though they are manifest failures, cities determine the politics of many states.
Without the five boroughs and a few upstate counties, New York state would be solidly red. Absent Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, California still would be the type of state that twice-elected Ronald Reagan governor.
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson – ironically, the founder of the Democratic Party – wrote, “I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.” That was before homeless encampments, open-air drug markets, racial mobs and sanctuary cities.
Today, our municipalities are noted for punitive taxes, rampant crime, abject poverty, failed schools, waste and corruption. From 2013 to 2023, Chicago’s commercial property taxes jumped 93%.
New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani – with his free bus service, no-cost child care and municipal grocery stores – is merely the next logical step in the devolution of urban America.
Crime is the most visible sign of urban decay. The District’s homicide rate is five times higher than Mexico City’s. In 2024, there were 1,026 assaults with a dangerous weapon in our nation’s capital. That’s after officials cooked the books to make the crime rate seem lower.
Nationally, shoplifting was up 54% in 2021. Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed store owners for not keeping high-end merchandise locked up, which is like blaming rape victims for being vulnerable.
Some mayors belong in a perp walk. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson blames youth crime on “a sense of hopelessness.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass fiddled around in Ghana while L.A. burned.
For big cities, the standard solution to any problem is to throw tons of money at it.
On an average night in 2024, there were 771,450 homeless in the United States. San Francisco spends $1 billion annually on its homeless population, which has grown 32% since 2010.
With homelessness comes crime, addiction, disease and mental illness. Two-thirds of the homeless are addicts or alcoholics. City streets have been turned into toilets. San Francisco posts maps to help pedestrians navigate piles of human feces.
Cities that once educated generations of immigrants now are illiteracy factories. In 2020, the Illinois Department of Education estimated that only 1 in 10 Chicago schools had students reading or doing math at grade level.
Blue cities have spurred urban flight. From 2020 to 2022, more than 2 million left our 10 largest cities.
Only one of our 15 largest cities has a Republican mayor. The Windy City elected its last Republican mayor in 1927.
Many prominent Democrats started in municipal politics, then went on to ruin other things. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was a San Francisco district attorney. California Gov. Gavin Newsom was its mayor. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
How did big cities become liberal welfare plantations?
Urban machines are a Democratic invention started by Boss Tweed. As more productive urbanites left for red states, those remaining were increasingly impoverished and easily manipulated.
Handouts always have special appeal for big-city voters, hence Mr. Mamdani’s standing in the polls.
After a string of high-profile homicides and assaults, President Trump deployed 800 National Guard troops to the District last week. Democrats are squawking about the Trump “dictatorship” as if the first thing Adolf Hitler did on coming to power was to stop carjackings in Berlin.
The head of the D.C. Police Union, who acknowledges “crime is out of control,” stands with the president.
Mr. Trump spent most of his career doing business in America’s biggest and busiest city. (Trump Tower is not located in Tupelo, Mississippi.) If anyone is up to the task of bringing sanity to urban America, it’s the 47th president of the United States.
This column was first published at the Washington Times.