Is the governor really just like us?

The governor, in a recent television interview, suggested he wants to be just like everybody else.

Our question to him is, "Are you sure about that?"

Everybody else, for example, doesn't leverage political connections to avoid paying thousands in tax dollars, as he is alleged to have done with his retirement property in Elko.

They don't typically find themselves ensnared in a never-ending string of allegations ranging from improper conduct with a barmaid in a parking garage to handing out political favors to campaign contributors.

Maybe the governor was talking only about his social life when he said, "What I want to tell people is that I'm just like they are ... I really think that people should expect, and will, see me with my friends out to dinner, wherever, going to a rodeo, that shouldn't be a newsworthy thing."

Married people in far less prestigious jobs than governor of a state would draw talk and criticism from acquaintances if they chose to begin dating. Why is he so surprised that he would, too? Does he not have a grasp on how the people he says he is like actually live?

Maybe the trouble Gov. Gibbons faces is that while he wants to be like everybody else, everybody else would like him to stand above the rest of us, to hold himself to a higher standard.

That's what leaders do. And a leader is precisely what Nevada needs right now.

This editorial represents the view of the Nevada Appeal Editorial Board.