“No one told me I had to make tough decisions for this job.”

“I’ve now spent the past 12 years being a politician, but just in case you didn’t hear me talk about it the other 157,352 times, at one point I once owned a brew pub.  I call it a restaurant in my ad because people are starting to make fun of how beer is such a big part of my life.”

Welcome to Governor Cliché’s first TV advertisement.  Gov. John Hickenlooper has become such a caricature of himself that we can’t believe he didn’t try to shoe-horn the “Teddy story” into his ad.  Oh, b-t-dubs, did you know Hick once owned a brewpub?

The problem with Hick’s ad is the smarmy fakeness of it.  Are we really to believe Hick is just back in the kitchen serving up food, or washing dishes?  The smiles plastered on everyone’s faces remind us more of the ones you find in a cult than in real life (The Cult of Hick?).

Hick keeps pushing the point that there’s “no profit in making enemies.”  This false equivalency ducks the fact that he’s a weak leader, unwilling to have his feelings hurt by people not liking him.  Hick, if you need someone to tell you’re an alright guy, get a dog.  As Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics has written extensively on, it is nearly impossible for one party to control the White House for more than 12 years, as, naturally, over those 12 year the President is forced to make tough decisions between factions within his own coalition.  But for Hick, he absolutely refuses to make tough decisions and would rather always split the difference.  If Hick was King Solomon, a baby is being cut in half.  If Hick was Truman, all of Japan would be speaking Russian right now.

It’s not that moderation is a bad policy, but if a problem hasn’t been resolved by the time it reaches the attention of a Governor, that usually means it’s a tough decision to make.  The type of decisions where there are no easy solutions.  The type of decision where there is no easy compromise be found. The type of decision where punting is not an option.

Colorado is a great state, that’s why we deserve someone who is more Churchill than Chamberlain.

All that the Hick ad shows, is that while he may make a great bartender, he’s never had the stomach to make the tough decisions a Governor needs to make.  Because at the end of the night, a bartender can send the customers home and not give them a second thought, but Colorado’s Governor always needs to put us Coloradans first, even if it means it makes some people mad at them.