“The opportunity to do this … just doesn’t get any better,” Mayor Vincent C. Gray recently told me during an interview examining his feelings about holding office and his plans for 2012. Gray’s looking through fabulous rose-colored glasses.

After all, U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr. is investigating allegations by ever-mercurial Sulaimon Brown that he was promised a job and given cash by Gray’s 2010 campaign to trash the incumbent during the Democratic primary. A group of residents has started a recall, citing Gray’s ineffective leadership — an assertion made by many.