Last week as I listened to Rob Ford explain how rehab made him take responsibility for his actions, I could only shake my head. 'What is he thinking?' I wondered.Then on a flight from Toronto to Vancouver I watched the film American Hustle. I think I learned more about what ails Ford from this movie then all the column inches over the past year.The film is an insightful study in the art of deception—and, in particular, self-deception. It also has an important lesson for the members of Ford Nation.American Hustle is set in Jersey in 1978 and involves a pair of small-time con artists who get caught in an FBI sting. The Bureau makes them an offer they can't refuse: either do hard time or use their skills to help it catch some bigger fish.As the story unfolds, we not only learn that these grifters are extremely good at their trade, but why. First, they have a knack for picking up on the things ordinary people are desperate to believe. Whether it is love, fortune or fame, the capacity for hope is incorrigible—and that makes a lot of people easy marks for a con.But our grifters also have something else, something that puts them in a class of their own: a crippling sense of inferiority. It makes them crave the adrenalin rush that comes from convincing the mark they are the answer to his/her prayers.For them, the art of the con is thus about much more than money. It is about being recognized as someone significant. Praise and adulation is a narcotic that makes the feelings of worthlessness vanish. So in a twisted way, the mark and the grifter need each other. One needs to believe, the other needs to be believed in.To make this work, however, the con artist must keep these roles perfectly straight. And that is a razor's edge. As with any powerful drug, the user is at high risk. The more intense the rush, the harder it gets to distinguish the truth from the lies. And that begins the perilous slide into self-deception, which brings us to Rob Ford.Ford's genius as a politician starts with his grifter-like instincts. He has a remarkable ability to divine what lots of people want to believe. Like the grifters, he is also more than willing to tell people exactly what they want to hear—a telltale sign of people who crave acceptance.In short, Ford's MO as a politician is a lot like the grifters in American Hustle. From his assault on the gravy train to his self-congratulatory speeches on saving tax dollars, Ford's talent is to say back to people what they want to hear in a way that makes them believe it is true. Politics is his echo chamber and for a while he played it brilliantly.But this talent also makes him vulnerable to the same risks as the grifters, notably, self-deception. In fact, Ford's slide began some time ago, so that today he has thoroughly confused the mark's desire to believe with his own desire to be believed.Perhaps this was inevitable. His personal troubles—the drugs, alcohol and so on—were always going to surface. When they finally did there were only two options: either tell the truth or marshal his resources and try to convince the people of Ford Nation that he had been smeared.In hindsight, there was never really a choice. Like the grifters, Ford is an adrenalin addict. It isn't in his nature to give up the drug of adulation over principles or integrity. It was much easier to tell himself that his powers of persuasion could save him. That he could still get people to believe in him.It was a fatal mistake. In his clouded state, Ford failed to see that by insisting on his innocence he was abandoning the political formula that made him mayor. Rather than telling Ford Nation what they want to hear he started telling them what he wants them to believe. These are not the same. If they once seemed to coincide, now they are conspicuously at odds.Ford's clumsy effort last week to sidestep responsibility while claiming to assume it shows just how far he has strayed from the old formula. When asked how he now feels about the slurs on gays, women or people of colour, in effect, his answer was that 'the disease made me do it.'When asked whether he is now willing to cooperate with police investigators on his past associations with criminals, he told reporters to 'talk to his lawyer.'So, while most members of Ford Nation surely think that “taking responsibility” is about a willingness to right the wrongs someone has committed, their leader is asking them to believe that because he was out of control, the harms he has done weren't really his fault.This is not just galling, it is pathetic. More to the point, it violates the golden rule of the relationship. Ford is no longer listening to Ford Nation to find out what they want to believe, he is telling them what he wants them to believe.The evidence that they don't believe him is mounting. He is stuck at 20% in the polls with no sign of recovery. The game, it seems, is finally over. Ford has fallen for his own con and now he is flailing about, searching for an answer that isn't there.What do we learn from this? The drug that did Ford in wasn't alcohol or cocaine. It was praise and adulation. His increasingly desperate attempts to hang onto being someone significant have all but destroyed him. The only cure now is genuine self-awareness. And that calls for a very different kind of rehab.Dr. Don Lenihan is an internationally recognized expert on democracy, public engagement, accountability and service delivery. Since 2009, he has been Senior Associate at Canada's Public Policy Forum in Ottawa. From October 2013 to April 2014, Don served as Chair of the Ontario Open Government Engagement Team. The views expressed here are those of the columnist alone. Don can be reached at: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at: @DonLenihan