How dumb am I supposed to be, again...?

I'm on a roll. While I sucked my paws over the state of federal politics yesterday, the incumbent mayor, in what I imagine he hoped was a display of charming candour, finally admitted out loud what sentient Ottawattamies have pretty much realized since their last municipal election-night hangovers hit: that his first half-term was a disaster cratered with "rookie mistakes".

Oh, that his nibs finally got anything even half right is fairly momentous. But us semimythical coyotes still find him charmless. Being played for a simpleton by someone who lacks the chops to do the job right does that to us... I digress. That phrase is getting to be such a trademark that I'm gonna put that on a baseball cap and market it. I digress again...

It may be that the mayor figured that if he copped to his record of awfulness, he could then, whenever after it comes up, do what spin doctors call "changing channels". This is saying, in effect, "I've already dealt with that, it's ancient news, now let's just move on and talk about what really matters. Which is anything but that.". Watch for it.

It was also the sort of calculated move that suggests the guy is temporarily listening to his store-bought brain instead of the winging it that is his wont. Polling at less than half the support of your leading rival apparently focuses even the most scattered mind. Oh, he fondly imagines himself as a big ideas guy, but he's just scattered.

And what are we to make of what David Reevely calls "Larry 2.0"? The things he imagines to be his latter-day signature victories - like flogging the very public Lansdowne Park to the first very private commercial developers that had the balls to just ask for it, whilst shredding due process - are, well, who he is.

Self-proclaimed 2.0 status aside, worrying signs of that problematic unselfaware hubris remain. The guy who thought he was going to ride into Dodge City and change things all by hisself didn't even know what he didn't know then. He has never grasped important nuances. Driving a city this size on a learner's permit is dangerous egotism. And he's still more than a little hung up on how important being a 'multimillionaire' makes him - in multiple statements. (Read 'em if ya have the stomach.)

It takes more than a bunch of hired mouthpieces who are all about an election-year surface wax & buff to change the fact of a man whose flaws are deeply embedded in his personality. Four more years of Larry has a very high probability of being four more years of the same, no matter what he - or the backroom - think they're floggin'.