Hey, Mr. Mayor: It’s Showtime!

I love L.A. -- you too? DWM, tall, fit, 50-something dad. Turn-ons: ribbon-cuttings, Philippe’s sandwiches, Neighborhood Watch. Turn-offs: workers’ comp fraud, urban terrorists, potholes, heights. You: 40-ish, registered voter, pref. Democrat. Let’s meet for some policy wonking.

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I wrote that personal ad to help kick-start Jim Hahn’s social life and sent it, along with 25 bucks, to the L.A. Weekly. They kept my $25 but wouldn’t run the ad; they said it wasn’t mine. It certainly is, I insisted -- when the mayor is happy, L.A. is happy. Then again, to spin what Dorothy Parker said when they told her Calvin Coolidge was dead, how could you tell?

Next Tuesday’s mayoral election cuts the field to two. But it won’t answer this question: Do we need a mayor at all? If at any time in the last four years Jim Hahn had vanished into a huge pothole of the kind he keeps a tally on repairing, would anyone have noticed?

On election night in 2001, I saw someone I thought was Hahn practically boogieing to “I Love L.A.” Now I realize that must have been the stunt-double Hahn. The real Hahn, the one who showed up the next morning and every morning thereafter, must have been pinch-hitting in Anaheim at “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” that night.

I’m an Angeleno. My expectations are humbly low. I don’t await a Rudy Giuliani; I don’t ask for a Gavin Newsom. But three days after the Oscars, is it too much to ask that a city of 4 million be led by someone possessed of even a minuscule nugget of charisma, of that force of personality that goes by the name of leadership?

Once upon a time, L.A. mayors actually had to resign because of too much personality. Arthur Harper, 1909 -- he kept turning up drunk in front of Pearl Morton’s bordello. (He claimed he was on a fact-finding mission.) Charles Sebastian, 1916 -- he quit after a newspaper printed his love letters to his girlfriend, in which he called his wife “the Old Haybag.” Stephen Foster, 1855 -- he resigned so he could lead a lynch mob.

Leadership -- that elusive intangible -- is like pornography: You know it when you see it, and when you don’t. On Hahn’s watch, crime is down, more kids show up for after-school programs and the San Fernando Valley is still wedded to the rest of the city. Do Angelenos know that? Do they even know his name?

A mayor’s policies could build a New Jerusalem in the 90012 ZIP Code, but you can’t get people to pay attention to the policies without the force of personality. Yet Hahn’s public presence is so boring that even his mayoral scandals are dull. No sex, no drugs, no rock ‘n’ roll, just a paper trail of ethical conflicts so plodding that its very tedium may help Hahn because -- lucky Jim -- nobody can explain it in a 12-second sound bite.

Hahn should have learned from his father: It is not only about getting things done, it’s being seen to get things done. Some substantial percentage of Americans still believes that WMD turned up in Iraq. Understand that and you too can get elected.

The mayor’s job is what you define it to be, and Hahn has defined it down. He’s not the man up in the bully pulpit, he’s the man who passes the collection plate. A mayor’s first task is to sell us on him, then to sell us on our own amorphous, chimerical city. It’s 465 square miles, 44 miles top to bottom, 25 miles across. Four million people live here, and some of them don’t even know they live in the city of Los Angeles, much less who the mayor is. They call me for help on something, and I have to ask them to look at the city name on their garbage cans.

Hahn labors to make a virtue of being charisma-free -- “Los Angeles already has enough stars” -- but even in that he stumbles. On Sunday, at a Catholic church in Northeast L.A., Hahn paid for his own pre-service coffee -- a nice touch -- then kept his handshake hand wrapped around the foam cup just about until the moment he walked into the church. At least he didn’t spill any on the old man who delivered Hahn a big Bob Hertzberg-type abrazo -- once he realized who Hahn was.

No question, the stardom threshold here is Hollywood-high, and political news, however significant and carefully staged, can get bumped off the air by a cranked-up teenager who leads the cops on half the freeways in the Thomas Bros. guide. So what? Deplore it, hate it, but work with it.

If leadership means wearing funny hats and eating exotic food you aren’t even sure is food, do it. William Mulholland said he’d rather give birth to a porcupine backward than be mayor of L.A. So bear down and push. Just be sure it gets on the 10 o’clock news.

The election’s next Tuesday. You must be present to win. And after that, whether you’re present or missing in action is up to you.