Providence needs this psychiatrist

I'm glad that psychiatrist Dan Harrop is staying in the nationally entertaining Providence mayoral race. For one thing, the Republican/conservative position deserves a voice.

For another, he is right that the best thing for the city's finances would be for it to go into receivership and start all over with a cleaner deck, cleansed of assorted dubious contracts.

For another, having a psychiatrist in the race is necessary in a city where at last count  38 percent of those polled said they favored Buddy Cianci as mayor. An historian would  also have been handy  in the race to  help address the mass amnesia about who did what to and for the city during the Cianci years in City Hall.

(I remember fondly Oscar Levant's superb book The Memoirs of an Amnesiac.)

Finally, Dr. Harrop should stay in because he is so funny and good-humored. He reminds me of  conservative writer, editor and talk-show host William F. Buckley Jr., who, while running for mayor of New York in 1965, was asked what he would do if he were  actually elected.

He famously responded:

"Demand a recount.''

--- Robert Whitcomb