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I’ve heard most of the imaginable complaints against Maura Hennigan, and I agree with most of them. She’s a complainer, elevating gripe to a high art trumping policy, political sense and vision for the city. Her campaign has sometimes, as with her latching onto the Victoria Snellgrove incident, crossed into tactless absurdity. But I’m voting for her anyway.

Not because we need a woman mayor or because things are horrible in the city or because after 12 years we need a change. Rather, this election for me is a stark choice between a political system where policies can be up for debate and decision by the electorate and one in which personality and inertia count for everything. Menino isn’t willing to debate. He doesn’t trust that potentially unpopular positions can be explained or that the voters can be persuaded. The contempt for democratic legitimation is in fact flabbergasting.

Too much goes on in this city without any debate, discussion or popular will. Businesses get denied expansion permits, historic buildings get torn down, and harebrained gentrification and tourism schemes go unimpeded. The city council has a role in some things, but its powers are limited. Our political system is about as centralized in the mayor’s office as possible. So that if you care about development issues, about the school board direction, about the direction of the city, or about permits and restrictions, your only recouse is your vote in the mayoral election. Yet both the news media and the political junkies have for the most part treated the substance of the office as secondary at best, unimportant at worst. They wait for the perfect candidate is handed to them on a platter, in effect treating the election as coronation. MassMarrier writes,

Hennigan has shown no stuff — no plan, no vision, no reason to take a chance on her. Yet, she wants 30% of the vote or more, so that she can obstruct Menino and have a better chance in four years. We say, rubbish. Trounce her, so that a stronger candidate must emerge for the next mayoral election.

I disagree. A stonger candidate won’t emerge next time unless Hennigan can defy expectations and show that the voters actually do expect ideas to be part of the race. For that it’s worth putting up with all of Hennigan’s imperfections.