Last modified: Saturday, April 19, 2008 1:01 AM EDT HAND: Whatever became of teamwork? It is all very strange. Six months ago Attleboro Mayor Kevin Dumas was running for re-election touting his record of leading the way on the downtown urban renewal project and a plan to rebuild Attleboro High School. Now he appears to be turning his back on both projects. Dumas said he still supports the downtown project, but does not want to fund the salaries of the people who run it. Instead, he has his own plans for revitalizing downtown. He has also sent his assistant, Barry LaCasse, out to pass the word that one of the people running the project - redeveloper director Michael Milanoski - is difficult to work with. Is that a good reason to undermine a multi-million project that just months ago the mayor was taking credit for, saying it was the key to the city's future? City Hall insiders say the friction between City Hall and the redevelopment authority has been building for some time. They also say the mayor wants more immediate results downtown that he can take credit for. Apparently, the "There is no I in team" approach City Hall used to preach is gone. Then there is the high school project. For more than a decade city officials have been talking about rebuilding the 1960-era school. Dumas campaigned on it when he was re-elected last fall. Now the mayor has taken the project, and even a feasibility study for the project, out of his capital improvement plan. In laymen's terms, that means there is no intention to make even preliminary progress toward a high school project for many years to come. Instead, the mayor plans to do patchwork repairs to the school, such as roof replacements and new lockers. The two changes in position by the mayor are dramatic and it is all very strange indeed. The 'nothing' election If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, then the 2008 presidential race is becoming the campaign about nothing. The campaign has been reduced to a daily search for the candidate who suffered a slip of the tongue that day. Or, failing that, a search for an outrageous comment made by an associate of a candidate. We have had Barack Obama's "bitter" small town comment. There was Hillary Clinton's dodging sniper fire comment. And John McCain had his confusion of Sunni and Shiite Muslims being backed by Iran. Heated commentary followed each flub for days on end. There is a school of thought that these comments provide important insight into the character and mindset of the candidates. But, the dwelling on verbal miscues has become obsessive to the point that nearly all serious consideration of the candidates has ended. There has been precious little talk from the candidates and those covering them for the past few months about health care, the mortgage crisis, oil prices or even the war in Iraq. Obama complained the other day that it took panelists 45 minutes to ask an issue-related question in a debate Wednesday. The media instead dwells on the trivial and the candidates fuel it by harping on their opponents foul-ups. In other words, it's yada, yada, yada. Just like in Seinfeld. JIM HAND covers politics for The Sun Chronicle. His commentaries appear in this space on Saturdays. Contact him at 508-236-0399 or at jhand@thesunchronicle.com.