It's one thing to state emphatically in your inaugural address that "there is nothing government does that cannot be done ethically and transparently."
It's another to invite regular folks over for cocoa and to ask them to dream your impossible dreams.
"Every candidate wants to meet you when they need your vote," noted Lance Haver, the veteran advocate-turned-director of consumer affairs for the city as he watched the lovefest.
Since when do winners try this hard?
Hopes and dreams
In the spirited line outside the experiment in political populism in a post-9/11 world, Camisha Brown and Chelcie Rojas held the hopes and dreams of Philadelphia in a three-ring binder.
The Independence Charter eighth graders were prepared to turn over the book of 680 schoolmates' soul-baring to Mayor Nutter on one condition: that he take it seriously.
Or, as Chelcie, 14, wrote: "I dream that one day I can walk around my neighborhood without being so cautious. P.S. I hope that you take this letter into consideration and don't just look at it as some kid writing you some fantasy for Philly."
That, she needn't have worried about. Upstairs in Conversation Hall - in front of a statue of no less a role model than George Washington - Nutter was making his own fantasy reality.
"We're returning government to the citizens," he told me during one break, amazed to hear that the crowd outside was too large to estimate.
Regular people, he suggested, "have never had an opportunity to be here."
Like everything about the event, the remark was both symbolic and pointed.
"Symbolism is important," City Councilman Jim Kenney says when I ask him about the lasting impact of Nutter's Capraesque first impression, how much time he buys with all this good will.
