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Todd Gloria evidently has been preparing to become mayor of our country’s eighth largest city since he was a kid attending Hawthorne Elementary School in Clairemont.
Before being sworn in as San Diego’s 37th mayor on Dec. 10, he confided in a tweet that 32 years ago he was a finalist in a “Mayor for a Day” essay contest for local school kids.
Even at age 10, Todd Gloria had ambitions to be San Diego mayor.
(Courtesy photo)
Gloria, 42, later explained to me the competition was sponsored by then-Mayor
Maureen O’Connor. “I don’t recall the specific details of my essay, but I’m pretty sure it was aligned with my current big city vision,” he recalls. He referred me to
Dave takes that old plot about an ordinary person who is suddenly thrust into a position of power, and finds a fresh way to tell it. The movie s about a nice guy who runs an employment agency and is otherwise undistinguished, except that he happens to look exactly like the President of the United States. When the president wants to sneak away for a quickie with his mistress, he is recruited by the secret service to act as a stand- in. Then the president has a stroke, and Dave is hired on a more or less permanent basis.
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When I first heard this story line, I imagined that Dave would be completely predictable. I was wrong. The movie is more proof that it isn t what you do, it s how you do it: Ivan Reitman s direction and Gary Ross screenplay use intelligence and warmhearted sentiment to make Dave into wonderful lighthearted entertainment.