Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, America’s New Political Superstar: Just Ask Him and He’ll Tell You, Really

In reporting on Antonio Villaraigosa’s inability to be honest or think on his feet when trampling on the Democratic process over being ordered to put “God” and “Jerusalem” into the party platform, the toughest word the LA Times could use was “awkward.”

Editorially, the Times took President Obama to task for allowing himself to be “stampeded” by the Republicans into the “especially absurd” amendment on God since it should have been enough that the platform already said “faith has always been a central part of the American story.”

But DNC Chairman Villaraigosa’s appearing lost like an amateur politician on the national stage for the first time got off with a wink and a nod from the Times  for pleading unsuccessfully for a voice vote approval of the amendments once, twice, three times before declaring to boos and shouts: “In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds have voted in the affirmative.”

Clearly, the vote was more or less even as everyone else commented but the Times  rationalized that “barring an acoustic analysis, we’ll never be completely sure.”

Really?

The Daily News went along with the joke, using the word “clumsy” in leading on Saturday with an article from the Denver Post flagship of its second-time bankrupt chain that carried the banner headline: “Chairmanship could be his springboard.”

Really?

Daily News Sunday columnist and KABC morning radio host Doug McIntyre didn’t see it that way at all, calling the mayor’s act in Charlotte “a huge embarrassment” and “a giant flop where it counts most — at home.”

For his part, the mayor talked to a Times reporter Mehta after the smoke in the smoke-filled rooms had cleared and in a story that wasn’t easy to find online or in print declared himself triumphant.

“It was a lot of ado about nothing,” the mayor said Friday. Villaraigosa said that when reporters told him after the vote that they did not clearly hear two-thirds support, he responded, “That’s nice to know. I was the chairman and I did, and that was the prerogative of the chair.”

Delegates didn’t know it but they had 10 minutes to formally protest but “not one person objected. It’s more a media concern than a delegate concern.”

Given the power of self-analysis and self-criticism since most in the local media are incapable of either with regards to him, Villaraigosa offered his own self-vindication:

“I can tell you this — the president of the United States said, ‘Wow.’ The president said, ‘You showed why you were speaker of the California Assembly. The president, the vice president, Mrs. Obama, all of them acknowledged the decisive way I handled that.”

“I’ve had individual after individual come up to me who have gone to multiple conventions saying this was the best convention ever. The messaging was so consistent and strong … and things went smoothly.”

Really?