Mayor Mumbles

Commonwealth, the magazine of Mass Inc., has a pretty good article about Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, his 16 years in office, and the 2009 campaign. It is a long read but it does a great job highlighting Menino's personality as well as his accomplishments and failures. See it here but below is a taste:

Once considered the unlikeliest of politicians, Menino is now Boston’s longest-serving mayor. Almost 15 percent of today’s Bostonians were not yet born on July 12, 1993 — the day Ray Flynn resigned to become US ambassador to the Vatican and Menino, then City Council president, replaced him. He’s served under three presidents and five governors, through flush years and lean ones, through September 11, the Democratic National Convention, the end of the Red Sox curse, the dawn of the Internet age, the start of gay marriage, and the embrace of all things “green.” It’s been a long ride for the mayor, and he’s not ready for it to end.

With his somewhat garbled speech and late-in-life bachelor’s degree, Menino is a surprising leader for a city riddled with MBAs, PhDs, and high-tech wizards. But he’s managed to turn his education and speaking limitations into advantages. Voters can relate to him. Bigwigs aren’t threatened by him; if anything, they underestimate him.

Menino can be, at once, confident and unassuming, relaxed and prickly, boastful and self-effacing. Although fond of saying that he isn’t a “fancy talker,” he is actually quite skilled at manipulating conversations onto safe ground. Ask him about the giant hole in the ground at Downtown Crossing and you may find yourself listening to his thoughts on ways to improve local nonprofits. Driving past Boston Medical Center, which was created during his first term, he points and announces, “I did that.” But when a reporter comments on the hospital’s Menino Pavilion, the mayor makes a shooing motion with his hands: “I hate it. I don’t like having my name on stuff.” Yet the man who purports to hate having his name on things has his name on a great many things. It is hard to find a parks department sign or a city employee’s T-shirt or a page of the city of Boston’s website that doesn’t say menino in two or three places.

Those last two lines are so true. Every single city sign in Boston has Menino's name on it. Neighborhood Welcome signs, park signs, construction signs, banners, etc, etc. Whenever he leaves office, it is going to cost a fortune to replace them all.