He would declare "war on waste." He would put the "big spenders at city hall on a diet." He would "put the customer first."
"The spending binge is over," he declares. "It's back to basics."
Rob Ford? Well, sort of. The George Smitherman who emerged on Tuesday was sounding a whole lot like a certain North Etobicoke councillor who rails against waste and corruption down at city hall. A Mayor Smitherman would freeze taxes and hiring for a year and freeze new spending until he completes a 100-day, line-by-line budget review. Like Winston Churchill, who made himself his own defence minister when his sceptred isles were under attack, he would lead the cost-cutting drive as his own budget chief.
It is a transparent and belated attempt to exploit the same vein of anger that Mr. Ford has tapped with his wildly successful pitch as a fearless foe of tax-and-spend city government. The problem, of course, is that Mr. Ford has a lock on that line. Why vote for a faux Ford if you can have the real one?
By coming out as a red-blooded fiscal conservative eight months into the campaign, Mr. Smitherman risks being seen as a Robbie-come-lately, an opportunist and a copycat who pushes the cut-and-freeze approach out of desperation rather than conviction.
As Mr. Ford himself put it: "He's taking a page out of my playbook, but it's not working because I've been walking the walk for 10 years."
Mr. Ford is wrong about a lot of things but he is right about that. In three terms as city councillor, he has been a relentless, even obsessive critic of wasteful spending. Mr. Smitherman, by contrast, was until just a year ago the second in command in Premier Dalton McGuinty's free-spending Liberal government.
Now he is suddenly a fearless waste fighter? Only last weekend, he was an old-style lefty, reminding unionists in a Labour Day statement of all the great things he had done for them while he was a cabinet minister. Last week, he was all about preserving heritage buildings, using government incentives to create "green jobs" and handing subsidies to businesses that hire young people - liberal initiatives, every one.
This is terribly confusing to voters, who simply don't know what to make of Mr. Smitherman. Tuesday morning he was warning junketing city politicians that the "city hall frequent-flyers club is going out of business." In the afternoon he was accusing Mr. Ford of planning budget cuts in "the style we haven't seen since Mike Harris was in office."
From the beginning, his campaign has suffered from a bewildering incoherence. Like two federal Liberals, Paul Martin and Michael Ignatieff, he seems to want the job desperately because … well, because he wants the job desperately. What, exactly, he would do with it if elected is less clear.
This kind of thing can be fatal in politics. To win, the first thing you need is a focused, easily understood message. David Miller was elected on a pledge to stop the island airport expansion and clean up city hall; Mel Lastman on his record as a straight-talking, popular North York mayor.
Mr. Smitherman? It is probably unfair but he is known to the ordinary voter as the part-author of a billion dollars in waste at the Health Ministry. "Obviously we can't trust Mr. Smitherman," said Mr. Ford at a televised debate on Tuesday, hammering away at the sore spot like a boxer at an open cut. "A billion-dollar scandal. Where is the money?"
Mr. Smitherman - let's be clear - is not out for the count yet. The campaign has only just begun in earnest and there's still a good chance that voters will turn off Mr. Ford and his crude, simplistic message.
Mr. Smitherman's best chance is to run as the anti-Ford, the only candidate capable of fending off the meat cleaver that his rival would take to city services. Vote for me, he might say, and we will build a city, not tear it down, living within our means but preserving the services we hold dear.
Instead, he finds himself so panicked by Mr. Ford's surge to first place in the polls that he is reduced to parroting his squawking tirades. If there is one thing worse in politics than being incoherent, it's being derivative.