The report in the New York Post that Mayor Adams might be eyeing a run for the White House if President Biden decides against seeking a second term is no doubt going to be greeted with a degree of snickering. Hizzoner hasn’t yet solved a single problem in the city — neither soaring crime, failing education, high taxes, nor fleeing residents. Yet we’re not so sure it’s a mistake for him to lay down a marker in respect of the White House, even if it is early.

For if the New York Post is correct — and we have no reason to doubt that it is — Mr. Adams is aiming to come at a national campaign from an angle no one else has tried. It’s an angle that, in our opinion, sorely needs testing. The mayor, the Post quotes a source close to Hizzoner as saying, “thinks the national party has gotten too far to the left.” If leading the Democrats back to the center is Mr. Adams’ political aim, we say “Godspeed.”

It might be, after all, that someone will have to move the national Democratic Party back to the center before Democrats in the city can come up for air and commence reforms. The way things are configured, with a bitter left-wing Speaker in the House, an uninspiring (and unprincipled) majority leader in the Senate, and a nihilistic socialist faction nipping at their heels, new ideas are anathema in the party, which is in electoral trouble. 

If, come November, the Democrats lose control of either or both houses of Congress, the situation might be right for a challenge from a Democrat like Mr. Adams. After all, he’s already positioned himself as the foe of the party’s socialist wing. And he’s done so with spirit. “I’m running against a movement,” he said last summer. “All across the country, the DSA socialists are mobilizing to stop Eric Adams.” 

History suggests it won’t be easy. The presidency has long tantalized Gotham’s mayors. Mayor Lindsay got nowhere, partly because he complained about the mayoralty being “the second toughest job in America.” The prize eluded all the others, too, starting with George McClellan Jr. in 1904. Mayors de Blasio, Bloomberg, and Giuliani have all vied for the job. And got nowhere. Mr. Bloomberg spent a billion dollars, and ran against his own record.

Could Mr. Adams break the losing streak? We recommend he read two books by Sun columnists. One, by our Ira Stoll, is called “JFK, Conservative.” It sketches a brilliant portrait of a glittering Democrat who, in the current context, could easily have been mistaken for a Republican. The other is “JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity,” by Larry Kudlow, a star of Fox Business News.

These sketch the kinds of principles that would be involved in the kind of campaign of which Mr. Adams seems to be dreaming. If he really believes in the principles that would be involved in a campaign to move the Democratic Party toward the center, why stop there?  It was Ronald Reagan who said that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party but rather that the Democratic Party left him. Could the best bet for Hizzoner be to become a Republican?