I think it's because of their ginormous brains.

I'm not sure I agree. At least my mayor (Steelerstahl) is dumber than a box of rocks and makes me cringe everytime I hear him blather about "Moving the city forward".

Depends. Mayor Daley runs the city pretty well, but has a squeaky, squealy voice and halting delivery that makes him sound like a goof.

Holy cow, the mayors wherever I've lived have been loudmouthed redfaced gladhanders. Sometimes good mayors, but always kind of blathery.

I usually find senators to be pretty smart folk. I've liked all mine.

Heh. I was actually just thinking about a few mayors like Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker. Newsom in particular.

I never paid attention to the local politics when I was in Boston but I feel like local media establishments are pretty much devoted to skulduggery and spend all their time torpedoing and hating on everyone so I can never trust their take on administrators and politicians or anyone else.

I think part of the problem is that I read too much beltway stuff and 90% of the time the quotes from congresscritters are excerpted from moments where they're caught in crossfire, fighting for or against particular things, so it makes them sound reductive and moronic. I like hearing about percentages and plans and data and things like that over just fighting about theories of the world as if everything was black and white.

Another counter example: Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. They call him "Mayor Mumbles." He talks *exactly* like Mayor Quimby in the Simpsons, except that he also lisps.

Toronto's mayor is pretty fantastic. He rides the subway to work with the plebs, even. He is a perfect example of the phenomenon Firas describes, which sadly seems to not be universal.

He replaced the George W. Bush of Toronto, Mel Lastman. He's known for his appliance and furniture chain, Bad Boy Furniture, and for its annoying commercials -- tacky even for a furniture chain -- with the slogan "Nobody beats bad boy furniture... nooooooooooooobody!" In them, he and/or his son is dressed as an old-time prisoner in black-and-white stripes. He had a GWB-like habit of saying really moronic things, like saying on CNN that he'd never heard of the World Health Organization, and joking about his Kenyan trip that he was afraid of being boiled in a cauldron by dancing Africans.

Montreal's mayor kinda sucks balls, but it's not because he's not smart... he's just a combination of ineffecutal, uninspired and possibly corrupt.

I like Senators so much I named my rabbit after them.
I like Mayors too, at least, most of the time I like Bloomberg, despite my initial reservations about him.

Governors, though, I take issue with. Somehow that seems to be a position that a lot of undeserving, not-smart-enough people end up in.