Then again, Ed Rendell has long contended he has no friends outside work. Just as he has argued he has no life.
Hah! He has a huge life. Rendell doesn't do quiet. Although he's separating from political office and wife, he's attaching himself to every job in sight: newspaper columnist, television commentator, lawyer, professor, investment adviser, visiting fellow, memoirist. He's Brand Ed.
Compare Rendell to successor Tom Corbett. Inaugurated Jan. 18, Gov. Garbo has been a man of shockingly few words and public appearances. Staffers say he's scouring the budget to eliminate the projected $4 billion deficit.
Corbett has held two news conferences in two months, one before taking office. Rendell could do that in one morning, then find time to phone and scold certain reporters with some choice words. Not that we speak from experience.
Corbett's news conference Tuesday was the first of his administration, where he tapped Allegheny County's Linda Kelly to succeed him as state attorney general, presumably to prosecute more Democratic state legislators.
Over the weekend, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette caught up with the governor in Dallas for the Super Bowl, where Silent Tom was less voluble than his spouse, Susan, who spoke "first-lady smack" with the Wisconsin governor's wife.
In an unprecedented move, Corbett made a bold public announcement - "Steelers over Packers, 31-28" - that just happened to be wrong.
An elected official can be out and about so publicly that we believe he isn't governing at all. We wonder: How can he perform the duties of the post and attend so many ribbon cuttings and chicken dinners?
A peripatetic, too-public official can make citizens queasy. But disappearing for weeks at a time makes people nervous, too. Such behavior appears imperious and distant - Nixonian.
