But he really isn’t the tyrant king. It took nearly a year for council to start ignoring him and treating him as a problem rather than a voice on the floor. Our system gives the mayor very limited powers beyond casting his one vote.
He’s an arrogant, apparently remorseless, entitled jerk who obviously got to where he is because of daddy’s money and in spite of his own self-destructiveness. That makes him pretty detestable, but it doesn’t actually make him the worst mayor ever. During his tenure four successive mayors of montreal have been arrest for corruption. We’re talking tens of millions in unfairly awarded construction contracts. Would the city really have been better off under George Smitherman, a notorious egotistical bully who also wanted to cancel transit plans in favour of his own pet projects but who would have done better at building a consensus on council to implement his dumb ideas?
With Rob Ford, the idea of putting a dope in charge went a step too far and we actually put a real dope in charge. But because city council is not overshadowed by the executive (unlike provincial and federal legislatures), it was able to function anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have a vacant mayoral seat than Rob Ford, but I’d also rather have a vacant mayoral seat than most other candidates and Rob Ford was as close to vacant as it got.
