Mayor Vincent Gray is scheduled to deliver his annual State of the District speech Tuesday night. Let me guess: Our chief executive will say things are darn good, thanks to him, but we need to work harder to make the nation’s capital “one city” for all.

That’s not what we who walk the streets, talk to residents and drink at the local pubs hear. The general sense of Gray’s first year in office is one of an inept, perhaps corrupt, certainly stodgy executive branch. Where former Mayor Adrian Fenty looked to the future so intently that he looked through and past the city’s current residents, the book on Gray is that he looks back, rather than forward.

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