03 July 2007

It's Is Important To Have A Good Working Relationship With the Press . . .

. . . but this is probably taking things a bit far.

This dashes any hopes Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had at being a vice-presidential candidate (there was talk). He had been toadying up to Sen. Clinton which some have questioned as he would seem to be less 'moderate' than she is. Speculation was that he's angling for a position in her hoped for administration, possibly as high as Vice President.

On the plus side, she's hot, which helps (if Monica, or Paula were hotter, Bill would have been ridiculed less), and she's Mexican, which probably helps, too (had it been one of the cutie bunny blond reporters he'd been 'getting in depth' with, then that'd have hurt him deeply with core supporters).

Personally, don't care, getting outside nooky while your marriage is falling apart doesn't make somebody a bad mayor. Even sleeping with someone in the press doesn't make you a bad mayor. Villaraigosa is a bad mayor cause he refuses to enforce the law, spends too much time trying to draw the spotlight to himself personally and not on the city in general, and advocates a variety of ill-advised nanny-state programs that could damage the long term prosperity that Los Angeles should be destined to achieve.

Los Angeles has been fairly lucky with its mayors, Tom Bradley did a decent job, but held on for about a decade too long, Richard Riordan did a phenomenal job during a very tough time in our history, and just those two men cover most of my adult life (James Hahn was so forgettable, that I forgot about his one term not so long ago), so I won't bother you with tales of the Sam Yorty years, as I really don't recall them.

Compared to Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia, the mayoralty in Los Angeles has been exemplary for a large metropolis. Maybe it's cause they don't really have much power here (that's wielded by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, probably the most powerful non-state, non-federal government positions in the country, if not world).

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