ROLDO WANTS ROKAKIS TO RUN: Roldo Bartimole has an interesting column in today's Cool Cleveland urging County Treasurer Jim Rokakis to run for Mayor even if his polling shows he can't win.

With all respect to Roldo, it's not the greatest career move to run a citywide campaign you're pretty sure you can't win, just to have a platform. And Roldo's concluding challenge to Rokakis, "What else do you have to do as you reach your 50th year?", has an obvious answer: Keep being a good County Treasurer. The pay's good, you're in a position to make good things happen, and 50 ain't that old.

But I have to admit, listening to Rokakis explain his hospital "payment in lieu of taxes" proposal on WCPN the other day, I was thinking the same thing -- and had a pang of disappointment when he said he'd decided not to run. Lucid, sensible, unrhetorical discussion of complex issues is a scarce commodity in Cleveland politics at any level these days. Rokakis does have a talent for it... and a knack for finding actual policy innovations to talk about.

In a rational world, his fellow Democrats would be looking for ways to promote and develop this talent as a strength for the party. But in the screwed-up world we have, elected Democrats mostly see each other as competitors -- so the only way a Rokakis can get new ideas or approaches taken seriously outside his own own fiefdom is to run for another office.

I assume Rokakis' information and judgment about his chances are better than Roldo's or mine. I don't think I would waste my time and money running for a job I don't think I can win. But hey, I know where Roldo's coming from.