Why big, boisterous egos are out of style.

WORE OUT HIS WELCOME IN MONTREAL AFTER A SINGLE TERM.

Anyone willing to risk the disdain of the Governor General by looking to the heavens for enlightenment might have noticed that the stars don’t seem aligned lately for big city mayors with large egos.

Denis Coderre is the latest to discover this, having managed to wear out his welcome as Montreal mayor after a single term. Coderre not only lost Sunday’s election, but lost it to a neophyte council member who had just three years experience in municipal politics. Coderre has been around politics for most of his life, winning election six times as a federal member of Parliament, and serving for a short time as immigration minister.

Just a few weeks earlier, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi had an unexpected scare as his bid for a third term proved tougher than expected. To many Canadians outside Alberta Nenshi probably remains the brash, outspoken figure who earned wide respect with his performance during Alberta’s ruinous 2013 floods. But city residents thought otherwise, and Nenshi scraped through with just over half the vote.

The circumstances behind the two elections include many differences. Nenshi is a left-of-centre figure in a traditionally right-of-centre province, overseeing a city that is struggling to regain its footing after years of coasting prosperously on the easy income of Alberta’s oil wealth. He can’t be held responsible for the economic situation, but proved to be an easy target for complaints about too many tax hikes and too much spending at a time unemployment was soaring and offices emptying.

Montreal, in contrast, is enjoying relatively robust times after years of lagging behind the prosperity of Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver. The average Montreal island house price hit a record of almost $500,000 in October, which wouldn’t get you so much as a starter home in Vancouver and barely a condo in Toronto, but reflects a building boom that business leaders were keen to continue as they pushed for Coderre’s re-election. But once again voters thought otherwise and opted for Valérie Plante, even though she was unable to explain in detail how she would carry out some of her biggest promises.

The link between the two is in the personalities of the mayors. Nenshi rarely has an opinion he’s unwilling to express, often to the detriment of those he considers of inferior intellect. Coderre may not share his Harvard pedigree but is easily Nenshi’s equal in ego, with a yen for the spotlight and an unshakable certainty in the superiority of his every view. He left Ottawa and federal politics after discovering there wasn’t room enough in it for both him and Michael Ignatieff, the former Liberal leader and himself a man of no small self-regard. At age 54 he has already burned through federal and municipal politics. His chances of earning the political acclaim he presumably feels is his due would now appear limited.

Both men found themselves struggling against opponents whose obscurity was their greatest asset. Bill Smith wasn’t Nenshi and Plante wasn’t Coderre. Smith, a Calgary lawyer, once served as president of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party, but to say he had a low profile before running for mayor would be an understatement. Plante is a mother of two who was elected leader of the leftwing Project Montreal just last year. Smith promised less spending and fewer sarcastic remarks; Plante ran an upbeat campaign heavy on her cheery personality. Since neither carried much in the way of political baggage, voters could hold nothing against them. Yes, they were both inexperienced, but more seasoned leadership hadn’t made the streets of Montreal easier to navigate or the taxes in Calgary lower.

Their success may represent a validation of the politics of pleasantness, which carried Justin Trudeau to the prime minister’s office and has kept him in good stead despite two years of often fumbling government. Perhaps immodesty shouldn’t be a prerequisite for a career in politics, Donald Trump notwithstanding. That in turn could be a bad omen for Doug Ford, brother of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who has already declared his intention to challenge Mayor John Tory in next year’s municipal race. Doug Ford lost to Tory in 2014 after replacing his brother in the campaign when Rob fell ill.

Rob Ford died in 2016. For all his failings he was the more agreeable of the two brothers, a deeply flawed but genuine person who was overwhelmed by the job and crushed by the scrutiny it brought. That probably wouldn’t happen to Doug, who boasts a Coderre-like certainty in his abilities. Provincial Liberals were allegedly disappointed by his decision to run municipally, seeing him as an easy target should he have chosen instead to seek a provincial seat. It says a lot when a candidate is viewed as potentially even less popular than Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Tory is hardly a shrinking violet, though he lacks the abrasiveness that rubbed voters the wrong way in Calgary and Montreal. That could be an advantage as he seeks what he says will be his last term. It appears that big, boisterous egos are out of style. Nenshi, for all his brashness, never saw Smith coming. Coderre is probably still wondering what hit him.