Rob Ford Redux. Could it Be?

A recent poll showed he’s virtually tied in a three-way race with John Tory and Olivia Chow.
There’s a real love/hate thing going on with this guy. We love to hate him and hate to love him — even though we do both.
Deep down, some people — maybe even enough to get him re-elected, it seems — harbour a perverse positive feeling for His Dishonour.
That’s because he’s the other side of the Canadian coin, the loonie side.
The Queen side reflects all the Canadian virtues of the national stereotype: respect, law and order, good behavior, authority, caution, discipline, conformity.
The loon walks on the wild side. Gather up some loonies and you’ve got (a) enough money to buy a fancy coffee concoction (b) a chorus of yodeling black-and-white aquatic birds (c) people who behave in ways typical Canadians would not.
John Tory and Olivia Chow are practically aristocrats compared with Ford.
They’re both diplomatic, competent and well-behaved — maybe, even, dare we suggest, boringly so.
They both belong on the Queen side of the Canadian coin.
Ford, along among the leading candidates is a certified bad, brash, subversive, say-anything loonie.
And like it or not, he’s become, like the loonie, something of a Canadian icon.
With countries all over the world becoming fractionated — Crimea has been chopped off and even Scotland is eyeing separation — Ford Nation is an entity unto itself, an enclave within Toronto. Ford Nation voters don’t care about stable, sober good government and a predictable politically correct leader. They want the bread and circuses their leader promises and delivers.
A slice of the bread came in the form of repealing Toronto’s hated car registration tax which put $60 back in the pocket of every Torontonian who owns a car. Councillor’s budgets were slashed. Stopping for a few groceries on the way home from work didn’t require shelling out nickels for plastic bags.
As for the circuses — if that’s what you want from your mayor — who could ask for anything more?