Transparency is the Cure for Those Fifth-term Blues

Presidents are said to suffer from “second-term blues’’ - a mixture of executive exhaustion, legislative frustration, and accumulated embarrassments. What then can save Mayor Tom Menino from a “fifth-term funk,’’ especially since the economic downturn has put him in a fiscal straitjacket? The mayor’s best chance to make his fifth term important is to morph from manager-mayor into institution-builder by enacting systemic changes, like an independent accountability office, that will permanently improve the transparency of Boston’s government.