On Thursday, former New York Governor George Pataki officially launched his 2016 presidential campaign, becoming the 1,000th Republican to decide that this might be a good year to try to get elected as leader of the free world. If you're wondering who the hell this guy is, that makes sense. The last time Pataki held public office was when he finished his third term as governor in 2006, the same year Hannah Montana, starring Miley Cyrus, debuted on the Disney Channel.

Since then, Pataki has spent most of his time thinking about running for president. He threatened to do it in 2000, and then again in 2008 and 2012. This time, though, it looks like he's finally taking the plunge.

From the looks of his campaign launch video, released this morning in advance of an official kickoff rally in New Hampshire, Pataki's campaign is based around the rather unoriginal pitch that he's a blue-state Republican who happened to be in office during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He says as much in the voiceover, narrating shots of himself standing in the dark on what appears to be the Freedom Tower, and also palling around with his wife in the bathroom, talking to white people in bars, and, inexplicably, reading the newspaper in a car.

"If we are to flourish as a people," Pataki concludes, "we have to fall in love with America again."

And who better a matchmaker than a taller, more translucent version of Rudy Guiliani? Of course, Giuliani quickly figured out in 2008 that there's not really an electoral market for New York moderates in a GOP primary, even if they did pull New York out of the rubble of a terrorist attack. Pataki also has the misfortune of supporting renewable energy and gay marriage, which means that today's Republican voters would eat him alive, if it wasn't so easy to just ignore him.

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