Mayor Menino Feeling Feisty

The New York Times brings us a check-in this morning on Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who the docs say should be home by Christmas after nearly two months in the hospital and a rehab facility. Additional details on the mayor’s health are sparse, so although I’m not sure how he’s doing with that strange virus he picked up on vacation in Italy or his blood clot or the compression fracture in his spine or the diabetes he was recently diagnosed with, I do think it’s safe to report that his condition is feisty.

From reporter Katharine Q. Seelye’s story:

“My attitude is this,” Mr. Menino said in an interview the other day at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital after pedaling for several minutes on a stationary recumbent bicycle. “I’ve run for mayor five times now and I’ve won all five times.”

“Overwhelmingly,” interjected his press secretary, Dot Joyce.

“Overwhelmingly,” the mayor added. “How I explain this is, people have to have faith in you. That’s the key to this whole thing. That was Mitt Romney’s problem — people didn’t believe in him.”

Can Mr. Menino make voters believe in him again after his long hospitalization?

“Watch me!” he declared.

Seelye did get one thing wrong, though. “Some in the news media have suggested, gently, that he should quit while he is ahead,” she wrote. Ahem, this ain’t gentle—Globe columnist Scott Lehigh did not mince words when he called for Menino to step aside. Joan Vennochi, Lehigh’s colleague on the Globe 0p-ed page, did mince words a little bit, but even still, she wrote a whole column pointed at Menino on the virtues of graceful retirement. Pulitzer Prize winning former Globe (and Boston magazine) columnist Eileen McNamara, writing on WBUR’s website, also said Menino should not run again. “It is time for Tom Menino to retire. He and Boston will both survive,” she wrote.

On that note, here’s a tweet from Globe Metro reporter Andrew Ryan this morning:

Mayor Menino sits with NYT for hour-long interview nyti.ms/ZcVDE8 He only gave Boston press 16 minutes. Not that we counted. #bospoli

— Andrew Ryan (@GlobeAndrewRyan) December 17, 2012

It’s impossible to know for sure, but it certainly seems like Menino wanted to snub the local, not-so-gentle, nay-saying press. Feisty.