Mayor puts people on sidewalks and sells his own ideas. In Charleston, that is.

A local leader as a salesman of his own ideas.

Imagine that.

It really isn't the same thing as trotting out John Rosenbarger to obfuscate rigged plans already made in backrooms, or insisting that what one's own two eyes say about 18-wheelers speeding through "reviving" residential areas must be ignored pending the results of a study.

Maybe the problem is this: First one must have ideas and respect their power. Perhaps local politicians suckled in the vapid Heavrinist embrace of the Floyd County Democratic Party can be excused for having no previous exposure to ideas.

It doesn't mean they need to be elected.

The man behind Charleston's rebirth, by Joie Chen (Al Jazeera)

(Joseph P. Riley) understood the opposition, he said. Urban areas were becoming depopulated, as people fled for the suburbs. They were afraid.

"I knew that the only way to bring the city back to life is to have it energized with people living in it, and people visiting it and people on the sidewalks," he explained. "You put people on the sidewalks and it’s like irrigating a parched lawn. All of a sudden, it comes back to life" ...

... It works, he says, because a local leader’s primary duty is to be a salesman of his ideas.