Though many of us have firmly sided in one camp or the other on whether D.C. should ban smoking in restaurants and bars, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams seems stymied by the pressure to decide. Poor Mayor Williams.

We’ll be thinking about him over the weekend, as he confers with aide Gregory McCarthy, debating the pros and cons of the smoking ban before he shares his decision as to whether to sign legislation on Monday.

DCist wonders how convinced he is by phone calls to support the ban from the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- a guy so wealthy he can buy positive approval ratings -- and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, whose voters decided to ban smoking through Initiative 901. Neither of them had to worry much one way or another over blame for the ban.

And we’re not sure he'll be swayed by the fact that the Zagat people will like D.C. If anything persuades him, it's that he'll maintain the support of the District’s non-smokers and secondhand smoke-a-phobes.

We bet that his cons list far outweighs the pros, or at the very least, that people against the ban have the mayor’s ear. Aside from the argument that outlawing smoking will hurt area restaurants and bars, we would think that there are a couple of cons heavily influencing Williams. For one, Williams' wife -- a smoker -- might sway his decision as to whether to sign the ban legislation, though he claimed otherwise to WTOP yesterday.

We’re also wondering if Williams would align himself with the French who said no to theirs. "It is not by brutal bans" that smoking in restaurants will stop, noted one National Assembly leader. Mayor Williams may also want to be hospitable to the French Embassy -- and to every other embassy that represents people who are free to enjoy, at any bar in their home countries, Gauloises along with their cocktails.

Should Williams side against the smoking ban, we’d also guess that last week’s New York Times article, "Smoked and Fumed," might have swayed the Mayor. In it, Spanish novelist Javier Marias argues that other unhealthy habits such as eating poorly, getting drunk, and sunbathing aren’t outlawed, and therefore, smoking should not be, either. Of Spain’s smoking wars, he wrote, "And that is the worst thing about this antismoking law and others of the same ilk: they unfortunately prove that totalitarianism is no longer incompatible with the democratic systems that once guaranteed our freedoms."

Wow! That’s quite a statement, but perhaps too dramatic a reason for Williams to cite to the press. Instead, should he decide against signing legislation in support of the smoking ban, we would advise him to stick to the author’s less indicting talking point: that he, like Marias regarding Spain, does not wish for the District to become "definitely more boring."

It’s a tough choice. We wish the Mayor luck.