Mayor Rob Ford is the best thing to have happened to Toronto in some time. Because of him, Torontonians are engaged in the city as they haven't been for ages. For more than a year now, civic issues have been the stuff of front pages and nightly television newscasts. Flagging journalistic careers have been revived and new life has come to City Hall bureaus wherever they're from. Whether transit or taxes, waterfront or libraries, residents are paying attention as never before.

Even city council, which historically has had to struggle to remain relevant, suddenly finds itself imbued with a new sense of urgency. Normally obdurate councillors are now getting together to form coalitions around specific issues. The traditional boundaries of left and right, city and suburb, mean less than ever. The left, usually its own worst enemy, has learned discipline and stayed focused. The right has undergone even greater change; instead of simply saying no to everything, it is now speaking with an expanded vocabulary, even about matters as sensitive as taxes.

This transformation, unprecedented in scope, is due to one man, Rob Ford. At this point, the mayor's failure to lead is complete. Indeed, it's clear that he doesn't know how to lead, that he doesn't have a clue about governance. Caught up instead in a permanent campaign, the mayor continues to wage political war even when the fighting has ended.

After his latest council defeat (on the Sheppard subway) last week, Ford declared loudly that it marked the start of the 2014 election campaign. In the meantime, the business of running the city goes unattended, at least by the mayor. To fill this vacuum, council has had to provide leadership. For the most part, it has done so with unexpected finesse.

The most impressive example has been Karen Stintz, the Toronto Transit Commission chair who led the charge against a subway scheme that never made economic or demographic sense. A North Toronto fiscal conservative who began as a Ford appointee, she faced a choice: either remain faithful to the mayor or do her duty as chair. In opting for the latter, she earned Ford's wrath but saved transit. After last week's debacle, a number of Ford's few remaining allies took him to task for failing to lead, for refusing to do his job.

Last year, citizens in their thousands rallied to protect the integrity of waterfront revitalization, a meticulously planned process a decade in the making, when it was threatened by Toronto's other mayor, Doug Ford. At that moment, whatever chance the real mayor had of guiding the city into the future evaporated.

Despite his ability to wage electoral war, Rob Ford has lost the peace. Fighting is all he understands; in his world view, people are friends or enemies, for him or against him. Compromise, the only strategy available to the mayor of Toronto, doesn't enter into it.

And, it turns out, the techniques used to win the election become obstacles once it's over; they get in the way. Winning is not the same as governing. As part of his battle against city expenditure, for instance, Ford cut his office expenses. Now councillors complain that he doesn't have the staff needed to keep up.

Since his political career began 12 years ago, Ford has been the council outsider, on the other side of most issues. He championed the hard-done-by against a city government he considered cruel and wasteful. He spent nothing and was proud of it.

Now Ford finds himself running the very machinery against which he fought so hard. But he has not managed the transition from being the city's self-declared enemy to its leader. Until he does, he will be mayor in name only.