is good PR good governance?

Writing about Mayor Cory Booker's tweet-fest as he shoveled snow from Newark's streets last week, TechPresident asks is his "direct-services-by-tweet approach to being mayor more public relations than good governance?"

The question misses the point that good governance and good PR are, in many ways, one and the same.

To be fair, "good governance" is a loose term that sometimes refers strictly to how efficient and effective governments are at delivering services and protecting citizens' rights. But if that were the question TP was asking, it would already have an answer: in no universe is having the CEO of a city push cars out of snowdrifts the most effective way to deal with a storm. He should, as a local Councilman suggested, be directing the clean-up effort from command central.

But I think TP is asking a different question: how much was Booker's front-lines campaign "good PR?" Governing is not just about running a tight ship and doing your work. It's also about leadership, which is essentially PR.

TP knows this. One of its arguments for why Booker may have mis-stepped is that some residents perceived his tweeting as another sign of his elite status (along with his vegetarianism and meditation practice). That, of course, has nothing to do with effective service delivery.