MAYORS need watching, as any national leader knows. Some are terrible liabilities, like the crack-loving Marion Barry who ran Washington, DC, until 1999. Others, like Jacques Chirac, who managed Paris until 1995, and Boris Johnson, looking after London since 2008, have wider political ambitions.
In two years as mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino has displayed no vices, but his ill-starred administration has been an embarrassment. A great city has fallen into decay, its parks choked with litter. And this summer travellers on the dire underground railway often waited more than half an hour for trains with little or no air conditioning. Strikes have snarled up the buses.
Whatever their faults, mayors are hard to remove. For weeks Mr Marino’s ultimate boss, the head of the centre-left Democratic Party and prime minister, Matteo Renzi, havered; he had no power to fire a mayor, but hinted he should “go home”.
On July 28th Mr Marino reshuffled his team and pledged a new start. It was his second decisive move in a few days. A week earlier, he vowed to fire his urban transport bosses and open the system to private funds. This drew quick, if conditional, backing from the prime minister: “If he manages to get concrete results…he won’t lack support from the government.”
A surgeon who has worked in America, Mr Marino is not a political novice; he entered…
