Another day, another Jim Spencer column. With a finely-honed talent for missing the point, liberal sensibilities firmly intact, Jim Spencer's columns are sometimes coherent, occasionally grammatical, and almost always a waste of column-inches. Today, he's decided that the incoming Mayor Hickenlooper needs to remiain a "man of the people," or something. That he shouldn't take himself too seriously, as Mayor Webb has.

This notion, that it's important to look like a common man, to hold onto the "bad hair jokes," reminds me of no one so much as Jimmy Carter. Maybe it translates better at the local level, and it certainly doesn't look like Hickenlooper has any higher ambitions. But Mayor Webb was term-limited out of office. He would almost certainly have won re-election easily had he been able to run, with or without a city building named after him. People eventually judge a mayor by how many jobs get created, and how quickly the streets get plowed. They'll forgive him pretty much anything legal (and many things illegal) if he meets those criteria.

A mayor needs to balance his public persona with what people expect of the office. They've elected a leader, and he needs to act like one, which also sometimes means putting a little fear into the hearts of his political opponents. With no public record to speak of, Hickenlooper was able to get by on his business record, his opponent's slavishness to the unions, and some cute jokes about parking meters and mousse. He'll need to be a mayor now, and to be taken seriously when he calls on that title to get things done.