Much ink is being spilled and many bytes of web copy being posted pondering the progress of the populist pugilist Rob Ford.

Canada's largest city, Toronto, is not blessed with a particularly strong slate of candidates for mayor. And those with interesting ideas, Joe Pantalone, the lone progressive and Sarah Thompson, the lone female, get far less attention than the twin bloviators Rob Ford and George Smitherman and the quasi-revitalized Rocco Rossi.

In fighting the Ford über-recht phenomenon, Smitherman has played the slippery middle; he's right, he's sorta left, but a floundering attempt to straddle the middle has resulted in merely a muddle.

The Toronto municipal election is many months away, but so far the mayoral front-runners have offered nothing inspirational.

George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi, both Liberal in name only (LINOs?), are in a heated race to the bottom over who can say "privatize" the most, who can more adeptly lambaste unions, who can continue to repeat that insidious fabrication that government shouldn't be in the business of being in business.