CLEVER...BUT WISE?

Christy Clark is a very clever politician.

She is a populist and plays to her crowd like a liquor store busker.

Her final comment on her squeaker victory last night was a boisterous reference to - guess who? - a certain local hockey team.

Her cheesy stunt during the mini-election here in Pt. Grey smacked of arrogance, ignorance and delusions of royalty.

Clark, like a method actor doing research, became for an hour or two a waitress and an elevator operator and a shoe shine boy.

Before I began my real working life at the age of 24, I had 30 different jobs. I counted them up. 30.

I was 15 different kinds of salesman - from toys and men's clothes at The Bay to door-to-door encyclopedias. I was an accountants clerk, a taxi driver and dispatcher, a teacher, a caddy and I poured cement and made hamburgers (although not at the same time, in spite of the registered complaints.)

By the time you reach the age of political life, shouldn't you have gathered some life experience? Shouldn't you have held some miserable jobs and learned how to survive awful bosses and demanding customers? Isn't that what we used to call "growing up?"

Apparently not.

Apparently, one smiles ones way into power or office and then, in a showy tribute to one's isolation and distance from everybody else, one dashes out with camera troops in tow to sling a bit of hash and wash a dish or two.

Yes, Clark is a clever politician.

But is she a good and wise governor?

To give her credit, she has already surprised us all with a few good moves - like raising the minimum wage.

But her track record as Minister of Children & Families and a few other files was dreadful.

Perhaps, like many another person thrust into the big chair, she will grow into the role.

We can only hope.

And we can give thanks that we are not in Mississippi or Colorado and we won't have to survive Newt Gingrich.