This always happens when a Democrat politician fails miserably.

It’s not their fault: it’s that the job is impossible.

This was famously the excuse for Jimmy Carter’s failures as president. The foul mood of America during his tenure had nothing to do with his own inability to do the job, but rather the ungovernability of the country.

Ronald Reagan proved that notion wrong. Carter just didn’t know what he was doing.

Now The Atlantic has suddenly discovered that America’s cities are ungovernable, which is why Lori Lightfoot was booted from her job as Mayor.

Uh. Yeah. I guess.

Being mayor of Chicago used to be almost a lifetime appointment. Richard J. Daley and Harold Washington both died in office. The former’s son, Richard M. Daley, served 22 years before retiring. Until Lori Lightfoot, only one mayor in the past 75 years had been denied a reelection. And she’s not the only U.S. mayor in jeopardy. Also this week, campaigners in New Orleans went to court to put a recall of LaToya Cantrell on the ballot. Being mayor of a big city has become a nearly impossible and miserable job.

Who knows why Lightfoot even wanted to keep the job? She hasn’t seemed all that happy, and has spent the past couple years getting into politically lethal feuds with teachers and police unions, as well as less damaging but more hilarious ones with other groups. Her own reelection campaign pitch involved a heavy dose of accepting blame for errors, which may be honest but is never a good sign. She seemed to be running simply because that’s what politicians do. By contrast, some mayors have simply opted out in recent years. When Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, decided not to run for a third term, it came as a shock despite several scandals besetting him. Atlanta’s Keisha Lance Bottoms, tabbed as a rising star, also left office last year after serving just one term.

Gee, I wonder what, besides being Mayors of big cities, is the common denominator among these Mayors?

Actually, for all his flaws as a human being, Emmanuel was well suited to being a Mayor of Chicago. He is famously a hardball political player, as politically nasty as they come. This suits the Windy City, which is as tough politically as any city in America.

Mayor Lightweight, though, was only qualified to be in the sequel to Beetlejuice. A profoundly unserious person, she was about as suited to the task as Joe Biden is to being president of Mensa.

As my colleague Annie Lowrey pointed out in January, every city has its own problems, and so does every unpopular mayor. One reason the elder Daley was able to wield power for so many years was a long-standing patronage system, which has since been dismantled; that’s good for stemming public corruption, but bad for modern-day mayors like Lightfoot. Women who run cities, like Lightfoot and Cantrell, may also be held to a higher standard than men. Before Lightfoot, who is also openly gay, the last Chicago mayor denied reelection was Jane Byrne, who was also the last woman to hold the job.

The author, David Lowry, has a point. But not a particularly good one here. Patronage systems do give mayors tremendous leverage, but the reign of Rudy Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg in New York demonstrates that the job can be done, even in cities as diverse and ungovernable as New York.

What it takes, though, is a willingness to push back against the crazies, and not be one of them.

Crime, of course, is the bane of big city mayors. But crime, contra the author David Graham’s argument, is the result not just of national trends (COVID policies exacerbated crime, but hardly as much as the George Floyd riots that were tolerated by most mayors).

What makes cities ungovernable is the unwillingness to govern, which means taking on Left-wing activists. My own city, Minneapolis, suffered grievously during the George Floyd riots, and that was 90% the fault of our Mayor and our governor who actively encouraged the rioters. It took days for them to reverse course and suppress the riots because nobody had the courage to fight back against the criminals.

Minneapolis may never recover. It certainly hasn’t started. We still have a George Floyd square lawless zone.

Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are law-free zones. Mayors and city councils love passing laws but are only interested in enforcing ones that reduce, not enhance the quality of life in cities.

The problem is not ungovernability, but unwillingness to govern. And a populace so ideologically committed to Leftism that they will keep voting in ineffective leaders.

I suppose this means in one sense that governing America’s cities is a Promethean task: as long as liberals are determined to keep voting in socialists, cities will continue to deteriorate.