Who's Your Embarrassment?

Richard Florida is an urbanist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, and Who's Your City? Like previous star of the urban planning literati, Jane Jacobs, he is an American who had chosen Toronto as his home. So you can imagine that Rob Ford is a disappointment to him on many levels.

But that disappointment became especially apparent in a recent tweet, in which he said,

Canadian friends used to ask me if I was embarrassed by George W. Bush, I am far, far more embarrassed and disgusted by Rob Ford.

I found that shocking, though I'm not sure why it should. While it's true that Bush did more real damage than Ford, that's really only because Ford doesn't have access to an army. If he did, I'm sure he would have found a reason to invade Hamilton by now.

This brings up something I've noticed: while we hold most of our politicians to very high standards (too high, I'd argue.) We give municipal leaders a pass on so much. Yeah, I know, there's the angry suburban taxpayer, writing letters-to-the-editor crying poverty over sub-inflation property-tax increases. But for most people, there is little known about what the local leaders do. And it seems to be a matter of faith that local leaders are inherently better than the more distant politicians at higher levels of government. Turn-out for municipal elections is consistently lower than other levels.

As I claimed earlier, Ford's conservative credentials are not as good as his supporters think they are.  But the same is true of Bush, what with his unfunded extension of Medicare. When you look at it, there's no question that Bush is a more pleasant human being. Both put on an intentionally dumb façade as a way to connect with gullible voters, though I suspect Ford's public face is closer to reality than Bush's. While Bush will be forever linked with a war started on flimsy evidence, I have no doubt that Ford, in that position would have left the truth far behind. Speaking of which, Ford is willing to play much dirtier: I don't see even Karl Rove accusing a journalist of being a pedophile out of nowhere.

So I have to agree with Florida: on almost any measure, Bush is preferable to Ford. And I, too, am guilty of being soft on local politicians.